My first-ever hydrangea
glows like dawn
with bashful blush
old-timey charm,
a stranger to me
and I to it
each to the other
enigmatic.
The first year is cautious
not my garden yet
we come to acquaintance
in slow etiquette:
gardeners must
deliberate
while gardens the gardener
cultivate.
In perpetual welcome
it says Come and set
but nothing says Go away
like a rocker that’s wet.
Sound the alarm!
Rouse up from here to yond!
Emergency! Emergency!
The moon fell in the pond!
A willing suspension
of everything,
deliberate slow reach
daring, cautious quest
rising skyward from some restless molecule
within —
if you’re lucky
the grass prickles your back
clover tickles your heels
summer earth pillows your head
if you’re good at it
you seem mere debris
senseless —
the fine art of watching clouds
is not quickly attained.
Practice.
Gardeners’ dedication
is in leafy order writ;
more subtle is the telling
of their heliotropic wit.
I do not know the photographer or gardener or painter of the sign, but I love the photo!
Many thanks to S.W. Berg for passing it along.
Mama’s smile is a lovely thing
sweet, with prideful charm.
But heed the steel in Mama’s neck:
If you come closer, I’ll break your arm.
Amazement unceasing:
that dad’s my son!
Better than chocolate
is watching the fun.
A very happy Fathers’ Day to all dads who’ve stood in a shady spot
doing not much with their children,
for whom it will be a forever memory.
Was there a merry-go-round in your childhood, dear reader? Ours were wooden with raised metal handles that marked the whole into wedges like a cut pie. Those handles were the thing. You glommed onto one and ran, full throttle, in circles, making the merry-go-round go faster and faster until — at the exact right moment — you could catapult yourself onto it. Timing was everything. It was an art.
Fast forward to something called The Roundabout. It’s been de rigueur in these parts to build The Roundabout everywhere there is a clogged intersection. So now, instead of driving in straight lines controlled by traffic lights, we drive in circles controlled only by the sense of timing (and patience) in other drivers. Even for those of us who have jumped on many a merry-go-round, The Roundabouts can be daunting.
So one doesn’t enter The Roundabout without every sense on the alert, and yet I didn’t see him coming. There was a terrible sound, an awful jolt, and for a brief second my car seemed airborne. I got broadsided by someone trying to jump on the merry-go-round. Thank goodness there was no one in the passenger side.
That was Wednesday, and I am still taking inventory of my person. The doctor says I’ll feel worse before I feel better. Meanwhile, I reflect on that fine art of jumping on. Were we really meant to be jumping on in cars?
Garden icon
myth and man
ubiquitous
as watering can
the story goes
his whispered word
was carried by wind
his followers heard
is he today
sculpted in stone
because he invented
the first smartphone?
With no disrespect intended to Il Poverello, whose bemused expression watches over the pond
from my neighbor’s yard. I just wish he wouldn’t be so welcoming to the chipmunks.
Basking in my sunshine
snuggling on my fence
this manic excavator
is pure impertinence
taunting me, Goliath,
feigning innocence
as though his bright-eyed smallness
masked malevolence
but I know his evil habits
— curse his tiny hide! —
he’s only biding time
’til Goliath goes inside.
Oddments 