The hanging basket,
plumply pendant,
becomes a lantern
incandescent,
twinkling August’s
low-flung light
into votives
pink and white.
Summer’s aging
into fall;
twilight’s angle
cuts like awl
through maple leaf
and acorn’d ceiling
while insects call
their raspy reeling.
Breathes there the gardener with soul so dead
who never to a friend has said,
“I grew these glorious slices of red!”
I’ve been gone, dear reader. Time travel. My dear old high school friends, Donna and Bill, have been visiting, and we had our own private tomato fest. Tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, served with a heaping helping of boast: I GREW THESE! I believe this is my third gardening year not killing tomatoes, and I’ve not one shred of modesty about them.
The tomatoes were highly seasoned with reminiscing, laughing, and reflecting. To be with friends we’ve known since high school is a real privilege at this age, and rightly savored with summer’s bounty. We returned to gardens, tomatoes, and roadside farmers’ stands of the past, as we slathered butter on the hot corn of the present.
It is fitting to pull out the old family heirloom dishes and other eating finery no matter how casual we are. Eating together is a celebration, and a pretty plate seems the only way to go. Besides, what better way to wear a tomato?
Now comes the time of catch-up. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist.)
Apologies also to Sir Walter Scott.
Going along usually
means we are resignedly
used to certain monotony
knowing what we’re going to see.
But the gods of serendipity
with powers deft and wizardly
bestow upon us mercifully
an occasional jolt of jollity
and make us say with energy
that of all a city’s jewelry
the best is nonconformingly
that thing with personality.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg.
Sometimes
if summer is old enough
and the leaves heavy with heat,
continuo of cicada
tricks me, and,
for so brief an instant,
I am back
in the time of bikes, grass prickles,
summer sleighbells of the ice cream man,
clothespin dolls,
clover braids,
a time when we had not yet heard of
mass shootings.
But it — that time — knew of nooses
of word and of rope.
To go back is to ask —
how could a country of lynchings
not become a country of mass shootings?
There is no perfect then.
When life in the pond
becomes dissolutional
it’s time to brisk up
with morning constitutional.
Oddments 