September 11.22: Coping, but barely

It’s a cool, dense September rain, grey as the sky, its splashes welcomed by the bowed heads of late summer’s garden. It is noisy, it is quiet, back and forth, to make me listen.

The images of the day, the somber pageantry in England, the shock and suffering of 9/11, tumble about in my head, looking for grounding.

At my front door, out of the rain’s refreshment, the potted pineapple mint looks longingly outward, poor thing, that cannot move itself. I step out into the cool drone of the shower, and there, against the sostenuto of the rain, the cricket’s aria. A piercing oneness.

The mint looks grateful as the drops wash over it, and I stand, stopped.

Were you ever surprised, dear reader, at how the tumble in your head was stilled by something so simple and ordinary as cricket song?

December 2.21: Coping

When morning’s a-glitter with rime,

I ponder if possibly I’m

the more fortunate one,

or is it more fun

to winter suspended in thyme?

 

 

September 9.21: Coping

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!

 

 

June 25.21: Coping

Every day

the sun gets old,

enfeebled, dwindling,

softens hold

and quits the world

with liquid light,

deferring to silver

suns of night.

 

 

October 8.20: Coping

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.

 

 

July 7.20: Coping

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!

 

 

April 7.20: Coping

“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.

 

January 12.20

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!

 

 

Connections: August 30.17

“It’s not easy being green”

Kermit sighed in song

the blindingly emerald parsley

argues the frog is wrong.

 

 

Connections

Connections: August 26.17

Dill feathers

butterfly tickles

dill seeds

crock of pickles

dill bones

pinwheel spindled

tale of life

ripening, dwindled.

 

 

Connections