Rejoice with me, dear reader,
and witness victory:
I’ve grown actual tomatoes
I’m chuffed and filled with glee!
When I walk through a nursery
the tomatoes run and hide
they know my reputation
for black-thumbed tomatocide.
An occasional single fruit
a miser’s salad plate
was the most I’ve ever gleaned
or could anticipate.
But, lo, a red ripe miracle
such glories on the vines!
I’ve danced the gardener’s jig
and changed my name to Heinz.
The worm’s-eye view might seem myopic
but my view is filled with the catastrophic
I read the news, flinch and squirm,
and think maybe it’s better to be a worm.
My family’s in the garden
the past grows ever green
my mom is in the phlox
most surely, though unseen
her dad in the tomatoes
my green-thumbed Grandpa Mauck
son of North Carolina
whose hills rolled in his talk
Grandma O’Hern in moss roses
her summer’s tried-and-true
her son, my dad, in marigold
(the only flower he knew!)
the dill for an unknown
its air a bit of mystery
but I know it figures somewhere
in my leafy family history
I don’t come (as they say) from money
I come more from dirt
so it’s good to feel them back
in horticultural concert.
Where some might suppose a tedium
the coleus flaunts its own ken:
when you do something well
do it over, then over and over again.
Thanks more to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
If clothes make the man
then flowers make the fence
pendant cloisonné
embroidery silk and dense
thus is common serf
disdained low-class chain link
knighted to regal fanfare
of trumpets peachy-pink.
Thanks yet again to the S. W. Berg Photo Archives.
It startles
its unbowed starkness
daring us to look.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
My grandma’s tub had feet
and Olympic-pool-sized feeling
her toilet had a chain
that hung down from the ceiling.
More, the bathroom window
was tall and opened wide
so fresh air and scent of train
could cleanse the room inside.
Now I have this footless
peculiarity
someone mean invented
to taunt and bully me.
It can’t be cleaned without
risking tendinitis
when I fold to fit its contours
it gives me rigor mortis.
It’s called a garden tub
a pity and a shame
someone ought to sue
for slandering garden’s name.
The window can’t be opened
the toilet’s in a box
so I reach way back in memory
where my grandma’s bathroom rocks.
