COMIC: In The Garden (Patreon)

This past August, Matt and I went to Laurelhurst Park for an evening of Poetry Comics. Anis Mojgani,  Oregon's Poet Laureate, read two of his poems to the twenty of us  sitting on the grass and then sheets of paper with an empty four panel  grid were passed out for us to fill with our own comic interpretation of  Mojgani's words.

You can listen to him read one those two poems here, In The Garden. Of course a story about plants and gardening would be the one to resonate with me- I am hilariously predictable.

Here is the full text:

"In the garden"

Sometimes I would lie in the garden and pretend I was a carrot

Sometimes I would curl under the big leaves

and become a head of lettuce

Sometimes in the softest earth I would bury my softer paws

and I was a rabbit

Sometimes

in the garden I was a rock

was wishing I were two rocks

was sometimes becoming three rocks

was sometimes warmed by the sun or held

cool and smooth in a palm

and brought home to be placed

in the window light beside a person's bed

Sometimes in the garden as a rock

I waited hundreds of years

and it was only the wind that touched me

Sometimes I waited thousands of years!

And not even the wind could move me

Sometimes in the garden

night would arrive

holding cupped in its hands the moon soft cheeked and full

glowing like the face of an orange skinned woman in a more orange dress

and the enormous night would use that moon to say to me

you are like how I am

and see how bright my body sometimes becomes

Sometimes in the garden I would wait for spring

Always I wait for spring

And for my love

to appear like it

returning

out of the cold

and with flowers upon its fingertips

We, the audience, had- I believe- half an hour to draw our adaptation of his poetry. Here is what I furiously scribbled:

At the end, our comics were collected and put on display on various parts of Mirk's traveling zine library bicycle:

Here's Mirk passing out blank comic pages for us to fill-- and that's  Matt and me on the left there, leaning against the statue!

It was a super lovely summer evening and a really special memory for me now. Thanks for sharing it with me.

(again, that's us in purple, leaning against the statue!)