A/N: Remembering his life in the wilds of Makai, Kurama can't help but miss the plants.
The Garden
Dove-gray cloud in sullen flock above an empty street
Waiting for the downpour to commence
Soon, aloud, the trees may talk in voices airy, sweet
Closing canopy in meshed defense
Islands form between the walls of concrete, brick, and stone
Linking like the veins beneath their skin
Living, warm, the garden sprawls, a sentinal alone
Humming 'til the sun returns again
I have seen the untamed lands where forests ruled the sky
Spanning countless miles of empty blue
Ancient green with vining hands and branches reaching high
Shimmering conclaves of leaves and dew
I have seen where wild things grow and swallow all they meet
Under orange sun and bloody moon
Violet sheen on midnight snow and shadows fell and fleet
Whispers, through the leaves, of danger's boon
Quiet city, shades of pale, so silent―all but dead
Palling cold before my memory
Sleep unfit for dreams' travail, a eulogy misread
Sinking under feral parts of me
Even here I may yet find those voices in the rain
Trees too young to tell of things that last
Ghosts appear and leave behind a shallow new refrain
Short-lived, just-born visions of the past
Never wild, yet never tamed, the weeds and vines that climb
Brought up at the mercy of the storm
Adult, child, a life twice-named; a soul caught out of time
Seedling power waiting to transform
Long held in this poverished sphere of sparse, malnourished life
Pining for my years in death's domain
Deep within this calm veneer a proud and lonely strife
Taking solace in the empty rain
Learning day by day, at last, to face captivity
Now I walk the garden paths unseen
Held away by fate's die cast from lands so fey and free
Living on the twilight in between
Knowing peace in every leaf and every sickly bloom
Finding beauty in their pulse, and yet
Heart's release made dim and brief by dreams of nature's womb
Cursed by never wanting to forget
So I plant the only seeds that thrive in this bare soil
Flowers gold and ruby, green and white
So enchanting in their needs, so simple in their toil
Never more than fireflies in the night
Walking on a concrete road as far as walls allow
Through the tranquil city-scape I roam
What was gone my hands have sowed―and I can smile, for now
This world is my garden, and my home