Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "My Life with a Gardener" is a portrait of devotion, distance, and the enigmatic pull of nature on a person consumed by it. The poem’s speaker observes his partner with a reverence that borders on estrangement—he understands her passion but cannot entirely inhabit it, as if she belongs more to the soil than to him. The poem’s structure, fluid and unbroken, mirrors the organic and continuous nature of both the garden and the love it describes, while its sensory richness captures the physicality of labor and longing.

The opening line sets the tone with a sharp, sudden movement: "The screen door firecrackers closed." The simile likens the sound of the door shutting to an explosion, suggesting both energy and disruption. This entry into the domestic space—what should be a shared home—is immediately followed by an image of his partner engaged elsewhere: "I find her at the sundry drawer prowling for twine." The use of prowling lends an almost animalistic intensity to her search, reinforcing the idea that she is driven by an instinct that the speaker can observe but never fully share.

The next line deepens the speaker’s sense of distance: "I’m nothing she sees." This stark confession reveals the tension in their relationship—her focus is singular, directed toward her garden, and he is left in its periphery. The poem doesn’t suggest resentment, but rather a quiet acceptance of his secondary role in her world. His description of her is both earthy and mystical: "There’s a tornado in her hair, her face is streaked with dirt like markings applied before the rituals of drums." The tornado metaphor conveys her wild energy, her entanglement with the elements, while the dirt on her face is not merely grime but ritualistic, akin to war paint or the sacred preparations of a shaman. She is not just tending a garden; she is engaging in an ancient, almost primal act of creation.

The poem then shifts to an image that borders on the supernatural: "I’ve watched her shadow break free and tend the next row of corn." This surreal moment—where even her shadow labors independently—suggests how completely she is absorbed by the garden. The speaker acknowledges her devotion but admits his own limitations: "I understand this eagerness as fully as I can speak for the ocean." He recognizes the vastness of her passion but confesses his inability to articulate or possess it. This oceanic metaphor expands in the following lines: "I say water is behind everything, a blue dictator, say waves are obsessed with their one word but have no idea what that word is." The ocean, vast and relentless, mirrors both the force of her connection to the earth and the speaker’s inability to fully grasp its meaning. Like waves repeating an unknown word, he recognizes her devotion without understanding its ultimate expression.

Her hands, working the soil, are compared to needles: "Her hands enter soil like needles making the promise of a dress from cloth." This is a beautiful extension of the creation metaphor—she is not simply planting but weaving something into existence, shaping the future from raw material. Even in winter, her imagination remains rooted in growth: "In December she begins smelling lilacs, by February she sees the holes peppers burn through snow." This is not just anticipation but a deep, almost hallucinatory connection to the garden—she experiences it even in its absence, seeing the potential long before it manifests. This visionary quality underscores her oneness with nature, while the speaker, in contrast, remains the observer.

The most poignant moment of the poem comes in the confession: "I see her, she’s the last green thing I need." In this single line, the speaker reveals the depth of his love—she is not just part of the garden, she is the garden, the sustenance and vitality that he clings to. Yet there is also a loneliness in this realization; while she is immersed in the growth of her plants, he finds his sustenance in her, suggesting an imbalance of devotion.

As night falls, she is finally drawn away from the soil: "When finally she’s pushed inside by the rude hands of dusk." The choice of pushed suggests that it is not her own will but external forces that remove her from her work—she would stay outside forever if the dark didn’t intervene. Only then does the speaker claim his moment: "I set down my life for her skin." This line is intimate, an act of surrender, as he waits for her return to their shared space. He describes her body in terms of the garden: "Taught all day how to smell like the sun, and the hundred directions of her hair." She carries the warmth and scent of the outside world with her, and even in their intimacy, he acknowledges that part of her still belongs to something else.

The final lines reveal the quiet longing in the speaker’s gaze: "And eyes that look through me to flowers that only open their mouths to speak with the moon." Even as she is physically near him, her attention is elsewhere. Her gaze "looks through him," as if he is translucent, secondary to the larger cycles of nature she is attuned to. The image of the flowers speaking to the moon reinforces the idea that there are conversations and connections she has that exclude him—she exists in a dialogue with something vast and eternal, and he remains, as always, watching.

Hicok’s "My Life with a Gardener" is a poem of reverence and quiet yearning. It captures the paradox of love—being close yet distant, devoted yet peripheral. The speaker does not resent his role as an outsider to her passion; rather, he marvels at it, accepts it, and ultimately finds his own place in relation to it. The poem is lush with imagery, merging the human body with the natural world, and in doing so, it speaks to the ways in which people grow toward and away from each other, like vines reaching for light.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...