The Serenity Garden

by Molly Pershin Raynor

 

This piece weaves in quotes from Zadie Smith and from Timothy Snyder’s citizens guidebook, “On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century.” Each part of my piece starts with one of the lessons from his book.

 

I. Be kind to our language. 

I am writing this in the courtyard in Kerrytown,
On the last hot day of the year,
Under a fat full moon
Pulling ribbons of blood from me,
My uterine walls shedding as the trees do,
Golden confetti fluttering down,
Green ivy licking up the bricks
Before the frost turns it crimson.

I’ve always called this courtyard “the Serenity Garden”
Because that’s what my parents called it when I was young.
I thought that was the official name, that somewhere there
Was a plaque promising serenity between these bricks,
Until the day I told a friend to “meet me in the
Serenity Garden” and they looked at me confused.
We laughed when I learned my sweet mistake
But then it spread like seeds in the wind –
Now many of my friends call it that.

Our children only know what we teach them.

My parents built me a world of magic & kindness,
My momma the storylady taught morals through
Folktales – Anansi the trickster spider,
Molly Wuppi, the courageous girl who
Outsmarted the giant to save her sisters.

So now I choose my words carefully,
Molding my son’s life into the shape of freedom,
Wide as ocean, wild as the roses winding up my porch.

Before the encampments on the Diag were torn down,
I took him to visit them almost every day – I wanted him
To see the way young people scrapped together a
New world with tents & books & Trader Joe’s snacks
& hope, that’s why we went, for the way they bent
Time & space, blew bubbles for my baby, each one:
A whole iridescent planet of hope.

*

II. Do not obey in advance.  

One of the teens I mentor chose
To write her college essay about the kindness
Of her friends and family, how they moved her
To be more generous. So now we spend our
Monday afternoons listing small miracles,
Stretching them like sweet taffy across the page.

We traumatize our children and then ask them to
Articulate their trauma with perfect punctuation &
Paragraph structure – the bigger the grief, the better
The essay. Show us how you can still get straight As
While we deport your parents,
While we strip you of your bodily rights.

Her refusal is a simple act of sabotage: her decision,
At 17, to write, instead, about love, about gratitude,
About her father preparing hot water for her each morning,
Before she’s even awake: this is a choice.

Planting milkweed for the butterflies &
Bee balm for the bees, letting dandelions
Live their little yellow lives: this a choice.

Swarming masked ICE officials with chants and
Cameras until they scurry away: this is a choice.

Smiling at the man on the corner that most
People avoid: this is a choice.

Going to therapy, to sit with all your slivers
Of self & make a mosaic of the mending, a kinder mirror
That reflects you and reflects the world too: this is a choice.

Boarding the flotilla to Gaza, knowing you will be
Abducted and abused: this is a choice.

Although none of the boats made it through the blockade,
IDF was distracted long enough for fisherman to fish,
To feed their families for just a day, & this too, is a choice:

To go on fishing & living in the face of death.

We think we are powerless but every moment is a choice,
Until it’s not. Every breath, every word.

Two years ago I learned the Arabic word Sumud-
Steadfastness. May we be steadied in our study of Sumud.

*

III. Be as courageous as you can.

I take my two year old on a walk to look for yellow leaves
And as I teach him, I teach myself:
Find the gold gingko beneath the piece of trash,
The silver lining of a crumpled cup in the gutter,
The bridge waiting to be rebuilt between me
& someone that hurt me, between us
& the world that hurts us.

To answer the question:

How to live the time of our lives alongside the time of history?

I cast a spell:

May we hold each other
Close as garlic cloves.

May we get in formation:

A murmuration of starlings,
A network of mycelium,
A flock of antizionists,
A pride of antifascists,

& more than what we’re against,
I cast a spell for what we are:

A cluster of small miracles
A museum of good loving.

We are living history,
Ancestors in the making,
Building the world we wish for,
Blowing dandelion wisps into the wind.

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Listen to the poem here:

 

 

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