Love is the bloom of petals, true,
But more than that it is the planting of seeds; the tending; the trimming
It is the plague of slugs; the weeds that spring from nowhere; the cat-shit on the lilies
And it is tempting as you poison, pull, pick-up
To think perhaps these trials are signs your garden is unfavoured; 
that not every pair of people born should share their lives like this;
And I caution you to guard against such thoughts:

for sometimes cats just shit on your lilies

A garden is a choice. You may choose to fix what was broken
To repair and make good, to clean and sweep and rake 
the dead dross away and make all anew again
Or not. That is a choice too.

Your love will not survive it. It will be strangled, eaten, destroyed by the world
that dwells in chaos. So I am glad
That you were made with free will in your heart and you chose
and have chosen, and will choose

To plant in winter and to trim in summer;
To cut the grass; to weed the flowers
To take it in turns to clean the cat shit off the lilies

To know that some of this will hurt, and to choose it anyway
To know that you could ignore it for now, and to do it anyway
To know that bedding seeds today will not bear fruit tomorrow
Or the next day, or the next
But that you will be here when they do

In short to love 
even when it’s hard
even when it’s easy not to

To make a garden in which life will grow
And take the garden with it when it goes