A Garden Under Stone

Verse 1 Mara rode the climbing line Past terraces of apricot and thyme With twenty-three years folded in her coat And one small seed her mother left behind Porcelain white, a thread of green The smallest thing she’d ever seen She held it like a verdict in her hand A wordless proof no child could understand Pre-Chorus At every empty platform Someone knew its painted line And every voice uncovered Another piece of that night Chorus There was a garden under stone Roots beneath the places no one knows What looked abandoned had been holding on Waiting for the light to find it There was a name beneath the blame A love that never learned to speak again And every mile she travelled brought her home To the garden under stone Verse 2 The baker at the cedar gate Said, “She pulled us clear before too late” The guard recalled her running by the track Calling for a child who didn’t answer back The teacher touched the porcelain And closed her eyes as if in pain “She made two seeds the summer you were six She said that separate things could still be fixed” Pre-Chorus The mountain held its silence But the story would not stay Each station changed the meaning Of the woman who went away Chorus There was a garden under stone Roots beneath the places no one knows What looked abandoned had been holding on Waiting for the light to find it There was a name beneath the blame A love that never learned to speak again And every mile she travelled brought her home To the garden under stone Bridge At the highest ruined station Where the old observatory stood An ageing woman tended trees That no one thought the mountain could She did not know the railway She did not know the year But a matching seed was resting On a silver chain beside her heart Mara joined the painted pieces Green line meeting green And the two small halves became a leaf From a childhood memory Final Chorus There was a garden under stone Life beneath the years they thought were gone What looked like leaving had been holding on Through every season of forgetting There was no villain in the flame Only someone who had given up her name And every mile Mara travelled brought her home To the garden under stone Outro They planted two seeds by the wall Where afternoon crossed the mountain tall Her mother could not tell her where she’d been But whispered, “I remember drawing green.”