September stands tall
between spring’s childhood
and winter’s dotage,
a bit round perhaps
with pumpkin paunch,
its brow gold-speckled,
but vital still.
One leaf, two leaves,
abacus of mortality,
drop
in quiet obedience
to the authority of time.
A cicada sings of ennui,
its sleepy notes sticking to
wet morning air
where August lingers.
My son’s back yard
yields prodigiously,
vegetable-glutted
because rabbit-free.
So I have tomatoes
in my grandma’s old bowl —
what better emblem
of summer’s warm soul?
Such joy to the eye,
such promise of bliss —
the Louvre should have
such beauty as this!
Gaura gossip
cannot wait;
it’s the latest
in click-bait.
To tease the marigold
hovering near,
it’s whispered in
geranium ear.
Good for the garden,
of that I am sure,
gossip so often
a form of manure.
Aesop says be like the ant,
eschew grasshopper ways:
the ant puts by and plans ahead,
grasshoppers waste their days.
The ants in frantic harvest
prepare for winter’s grey.
The grasshopper, all moony,
ponders the green of today;
in foolery like writing
does he his muse pursue;
he yearns to be a poet
and use words like “eschew.”
Many more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
I have no idea how he got the grasshopper to pose like this.
I was feeling garden-poor,
so took my little black pitcher,
snipped some mighty color,
and felt a whole lot richer.
I’ve planted my person
on many a seat,
but the best was there
on Summer Street.
Grandma’s porch
with swing for two,
where summer breezes
lazied through,
was where I learned
what sages know:
if I want to be quick
I must first be slow.
Back and forth,
I moved unmoving,
Grandma too,
our own kind of grooving.
Words fell away,
we floated as one;
I can still feel her housedress
all cottony spun.
The cricket sang softly,
far ice cream bells jingled
a summon to vespers
with leaf whispers mingled.
So today a swing sighting
is potently rife
with certainties given
to last all my life.
A Coke for the world
was a once wishful sing,
but I’d write new words
and wish it a swing.
Yet more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
for this wonderful portrait of invitation.
Does one zinnia a summer make?
This is my one and only zinnia flower. The seedlings that lived with me in the kitchen months ago, transplanted into the garden where they would be the yippee colors of summer, were almost all destroyed by the rabbits. Except for a few which I triaged into pots and then transplanted yet again, desperate for them to make a showing.
The results:
And one flower.
I plant tomatoes to remember Grandpa Mauck, moss roses to remember Grandma O’Hern, and marigolds to remember Dad. Mom is in the whole garden. So, as all gardeners know, the garden is not just expensive, it’s personal. The rabbits tried to take it all from me, and right now on this planet every loss is part of a huge rolling snowball of loss — and helplessness.
If there’s anything I hate, it’s feeling helpless. Life demands at times that we resign ourselves to it, but I can get pretty mad about that. I have lived to wage war this summer. I have potted and repotted and have fought the good fight with Irish Spring soap, rubbing it on flowerpots and shaving it around plants. And I have installed rose canes, which do seem to have some persuasive powers.
I have ultimately saved a small garden corner where my one surviving clump of gaura now thrives, the rabbit-scorned geraniums blaze away, and, in sheer defiance, some marigolds and salvia, once tattered, bloom insanely. Several of those triaged potted things have made a brilliant, if root-bound, showing.
I salute Farmer McGregor, the Grand Pooh-Bah of Rabbit Rage. I aspire to his greatness.
Those Olympians of digestion,
with their steely eating power,
the rabbits made me go next door
to borrow a cup of flower.
My next-door neighbor’s floofy Rose of Sharon.
The rabbits can’t reach these.
No doubt they will evolve soon with giraffe necks.
Street art has found a place
in cultural domain;
the spider looks upon it
with the master’s cold disdain.
His webby muse inspires
despite the hours of tedium
to pattern and to form
with gossamer as medium.
In gallery of flowerpots
the moon and sun elide,
performatively joined
on thinnest thready slide.
By night the moon plucks lightly
each string in placid rondo;
by day a somersaulting sun
cavorts in bright glissando.
Known only to the artist
where spinnings stir and start,
sufficient to the self
is ephemera of the art.
So the noiseless patient spider,
in retreat of sweet alyssum,
abjures the common cult
of crass commercialism.
With apologies and thanks to Walt Whitman’s
“A Noiseless Patient Spider.”
Beach blooms,
petal’d domes,
sand flowers,
airy homes,
a moment’s roof,
unwalled, unfast,
perennial border
edging the vast.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
