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.
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.
A frilly dot of marigold
a snip of lemon thyme
a dainty plume of tarragon
phlox snow at fragrant prime
radiant brown-eyed Susans
Rudbeckia at the crown:
smallness revels in itself
sans the world’s renown.
When July heat breaks
and it’s good to be alive
Coreopsis taps her toes
and dances with the chive.
Maybe you remember
my Christmas tree mishap
when it toppled over
and flattened carpet nap.
Family ingenuity
perhaps aesthetics-free
brought it back to standing
with pragmaticality.
And now my poor tomato
bowed by wind and rain
lists like my old tree
risking break and sprain.
So whether Yule tradition
or heavy-laden vine
when the question comes from listing
the answer comes from twine.
The impatiens on the screened porch
are spluttering, soaked and indignant,
protesting the face full of rain
blasted by winds unbenignant.
You’d think all the thundering torrents
would make this rank air feel better
but the impatiens will attest to the fact
it just gets wetter and wetter.
Marigolds at twilight
border of hot coals
fevered daytime’s embers
garden’s molten shoals.
