HORTUS CONCLUSUS

A man and a woman in their late twenties
bend their heads together, towards each other,
in this candid color picture.
What does she hold, tiny, between them
that holds their focused attention?
They are oblivious to the magnificent
walled Moorish medieval gardens
of the Alcazar rising around them.

“Paradise” was a Persian word
for “enclosed garden surrounding a fountain”
hidden in the midst of a vast desert.
Paradise, I now know, is the past
where they peer and smile at a shared secret
with, floating unknown above them, a rose glowing.

DONALD RIGGS