A solar eclipse
box of family stuff
we have to admit
it’s never close enough.
We search for the clues
whether cosmic or cousin
and sigh with unanswered
questions by the dozen.
This is my dear friend Donna, visiting. She is the one who gave me the concept of Connections and who lives the concept. She is visiting family and old friends and acquired a box of family history along the way. Pure awe.
The dill inspectors
all hardhat
ignored me when
I stopped to chat.
Summer’s old!
No time to loll!
Soon the clock strikes
half-past fall!
Decluttered, depersonalized,
undecorated, denuded,
stripped, dismantled,
unhabituted.
Ghosts of stuff
in squares and rings
I’m a material girl:
I miss my things.
Siblings teach us early on
the gentle art of sharing
MOVE OVER! HOG! YOU’RE ON MY HALF!
while Mom eats worms, despairing.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
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.
