Harvest comes soon,
the greens rich and deep,
how touchable, sniffable
the twining leafed keep.
A scruffy-kneed gardener
with nails edged in black
beams notwithstanding
the crick in his back.
It’s ever a miracle —
don’t try to explain
how seeds and a longing
are linked in life’s chain.
With thanks again to my back-yard gardener son,
for both the photo op and the basil!
We were green once,
in salad days,
fixed firm to umbilical vine,
slowly orange,
until, soaked in sun brine,
we plumped to red.
All as written by some sightless scribe
ordaining how life seeds,
or maybe
by some deliberate kindness
in back yard dirt
that soul and body feeds.
Gardeners wonder.
With thanks to Shakespeare
and to my firstborn, Dennis, the backyard gardener.
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!
