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!
Every day
the sun gets old,
enfeebled, dwindling,
softens hold
and quits the world
with liquid light,
deferring to silver
suns of night.
In harvest bronze the morning sun
gilds the whorling dill:
the year is old but be it known
that there’s a new day still.
And newness goes with every seed
into a time unknown,
bearing fragile hope
from the present that we own.
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!
“Lavender blue”
and “lavender green”
a few “dilly-dilly’s”
and “you’ll be my queen.”
I never could figure
the words to this song
but that didn’t stop me
from singing along.
I find peace in my garden
and old-timey words
where twitters and tweets
come only from birds.
Family update: my son had “a bit of a relapse” yesterday.
He is being careful.
The greening of the lavender
along the garden border
in April welcomed cordially,
in January, out of order.
We’re doused with April showers,
winter coats hang limp in closets;
there’s dank insinuation
that such misplacement posits.
Winter April such as this
seems not at all auspicious;
gardeners grow no seedlings
but only more suspicious.
Winter can be bitter,
and gardeners hate the wait,
but they worry when the earth
seems to de-regulate.
Meanwhile, though, they slog around
amid the muddied swells,
rejoicing through a happy nose:
how good the wet earth smells!
“It’s not easy being green”
Kermit sighed in song
the blindingly emerald parsley
argues the frog is wrong.
Dill feathers
butterfly tickles
dill seeds
crock of pickles
dill bones
pinwheel spindled
tale of life
ripening, dwindled.
The dill inspectors
all hardhat
ignored me when
I stopped to chat.
Summer’s old!
No time to loll!
Soon the clock strikes
half-past fall!
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.
