From soil’s night,
radiant star:
cool green nova
veined pulsar.
Every garden needs one:
a bit of brassy blare
a self-proclaiming optimist
its very own solar flare.
The library was a bike ride away
back in the day
bumping up
oof
and down
ow
the curbs
back in the day
my kingdom for a basket!
handlebars and books
precarious one-girl circus
back in the day
a tiny place, that library
in a big summer
and the books whispered
take me for a ride on your bike
to that cushy old blanketed couch
in your cool damp basement
and don’t forget
what this was like
back in the day.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
And thanks also to the Poquoson Library, Virginia, and all libraries!
Vined and twined and tendril’d
bulbaceious tantalization
the first fruit of the garden
is always anticipation.
Coffee raises eyelids
but a gardener’s real buzz
comes from the morning sun
caught on tomato fuzz.
The cosmos is so vast a place
more than we can fathom
yet here in my small parcel
no bigger than an atom
a wonder big as anything
unfolds in ordained mystery
as testament to irony
in summer’s ruffed consistory.
one tired and hollowing trunk
the stage is set, I fear,
for resounding loud ka-thunk.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
At the corner of Useless and Broken
near the Unresolved/Hopeful junction
a city of storage arises
awaiting its Extreme Unction.
Fragments and miscellany
tethering us to — what? —
the past? a loss? a wish?
a monument to glut?
Irony in cubes:
crowded emptiness
in corrugated sepulchre
I own my need for less.
As you know, dear reader, I am trying to ready my house for selling.
I’ve been packing, hauling, sweating, heaving, sorting, tossing,
stressed, sleepless, harried and hassled,
weary, bruised, and cross.
It’s been a long dark tunnel with a tiny light at the end.
My son called. Also a gardener.
They have so many plants left over from the plant sale —
he’s planted all he can —
would I take some?
If you are a gardener, you heard my gasp.
Wasted plants? All those cramped roots longing to stretch?
Gardeners are irrational
so I said sure.
I have so much to do and am so close to being ready to list
but I said sure.
And we had some perfect June days.
I sank my knuckles into the dirt
brushed up against the tomato leaves as much as possible
cooed over the poor cramped marigolds
fussed over the red onions
introduced the new jalapeno to old-timer daylily
pictured the banana peppers next the cherry tomatoes come August
basked in the brief respite from the world’s chaos
and my own
and now have the prettiest little kitchen garden you ever saw.
Planted
— go figure —
for someone else.