Decluttered, depersonalized,
undecorated, denuded,
stripped, dismantled,
unhabituted.
Ghosts of stuff
in squares and rings
I’m a material girl:
I miss my things.
Category Archives: Poetry
Connections: August 16.17
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.
Connections: August 15.17
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.
Connections: August 14.17
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.
Connections: August 13.17
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.
Connections: August 11.17
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.
Connections: August 10.17
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.
