A Sonnet for Borges

One of my literary heroes of the 20th century is Jorge Luis Borges. I wrote this sonnet as my final project to pay him a kind of tribute and to attempt to capture something of what I like in his work. For what it's worth, I present you:



With Borges in the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden

We sat together, you and I, there in desert heat.
We talked and had some coffee (black,
if I remember right). You left your seat
and walked with me along a little track
which wandered through the garden like a maze.
We spoke of plants: the palo verde tree,
the cholla. You remarked upon the ways
in which the garden is a simile
for verse. A line is not by nature free,
but, like the garden, needs constraint for things
to grow together. This is poetry;
it's here, you said, one hears saguaros sing.
Lovely, Borges, we had a lovely chat;
the garden, too, has grown different after that.