Writhing, the trees hiss
against the heat,
a low sky belly-crawls,
dragging its grey
over the chimneys,
and my lungs strain.
A slither of cool air
coils,
black clouds
stalk the horizon
on hot haunches,
growling,
so I know their want
and my littleness.
Upturned
to its cousin the cloud
like porcelain saucer
does each white flower
catch the spill of sun.
The world is a-gurgle,
the pond a-splash,
the flowers a-slurp,
the sky a-flash,
and thus does summer
wash its face,
preparing for autumn’s
russet embrace.
Morning came
too quietly,
neither chirp nor trill,
but only cicada’s
serrated drone.
A very timid cricket
tuned his small pipe.
There I stood,
knee-deep in July,
prickly and unsure,
so restless was the quiet.
Now the dark of August nights
and no firefly winks.
The Green Heron blats
like fallow French horn
once or twice a day,
and maple leaves,
scorched,
bleed at their edges.
Do I imagine
the urgency?
Time is out of sorts,
as am I.
The very hungry caterpillar
has cousins by the score;
single-minded critters
whose battle cry is “More!”
So formally attired,
you’d think them more discreet,
but completely unembarrassed
they hold dinner with their feet.
Summer snowflake
luminescent,
polka-dot
of lace florescent,
meadow frosting,
highway frill,
whitewater froth
of mid-air rill.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg.
On a still summer evening,
near the trees’ looking glass,
I developed the fidgets
from eyes in the grass.
I share my shade gladly,
I grant it rent-free,
so why this imperious
staring at me?
Magnanimous me,
all live-and-let-live —
could they be thinking the shade
is not mine to give?
If I were clothed
in raucous blue,
in alien world
I never knew,
I think I’d be
more erudite
than to flaunt myself
on terrain of white.
No, I didn’t skoosh it. I escorted it outside.
2019
2020
Yesterday I read a blog that asked if the reader has any gardening disappointments this year. Is he kidding? “Gardening” and “disappointment” go together like echinacea and Japanese beetles.
This is my third gardening season here; if you are a gardener, you know the third season is the beginning of seeing the garden as your own. For me, two distinct garden worlds: a bit shady in the front, a lot sunny in the back. Yes, Indiana clay and nasty root systems, exuberant invasives, malicious rabbits and chipmunks. But gradually mine.
Problems with a contractor have made it impossible for me to plant anything in the back this summer. All I have is a struggling collection of gangly seedlings with no place to grow. Empty tomato cages. No frilly yellow blossoms morphing into reds and golds. Not merely disappointment: it’s loss.
Gardeners survive the winter because they know a garden is coming, so when the garden fizzles the gardener kind of fizzles too. She might even let slip an imprecation. Maybe two.
Not everyone is a gardener, of course, but everyone has disappointments. And losses. It seems to me they are all felt more deeply this year because isolation is fertile ground for deep feelings.
So we cope, best we can, with emptiness where there should be life, and watch disappointment become loss, but we should never underestimate the toll it’s taking on us.
Three thyme transplants —
I didn’t need more —
when I went to water,
lo, there were four!
A second look,
I gasped agog:
I’m such a good gardener
I grew a frog!
