Terrified of them she was through long
Experience being swarmed with stings,
Running, her hands over eyes and mouth,
Running to the house or jumping in the lake,
In whatever way possible to stop the punishers.
For years, she made herself their nemesis
In revenge, setting nests afire! Or in
Evenings inverting a glass bowl upside
Down over their holes to watch them starve.
Only in recent years, as her ways have slowed,
Finding in books their part in the scheme of
Things as helpers in garden and orchard,
Has she learned to move more gently
Even as they light on her cidery hands,
Milking fingers for juice, never stinging.
Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching
Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves
Each rustling against other, turning brown.
Right here they were planted, next bed over,
Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up
And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost --
Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.
Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer,
The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and
Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool
Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed;
Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod
Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for
That coolness she knew as round starch balls
All her life she'd depended on. It's not
She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over
when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.
Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five-tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's
sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what
was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,
Commonly, this is done with herbicide.
Leery of that, she tried a chain saw. That was
Easy enough, but made fumes and sets fire to
All the earth's air over time. Electric clippers
Ruled the roost awhile, but that, we know,
In the scheme of things is but a longer tailpipe,
Neither the labor direct nor personal. She's
Going to have to simplify further. She takes
The hand pruner with her to the patch. It means
Her time in blighted shade, bending, will be
Extended, reaching to each stem in turn,
Killing with a snip and twist, dragging four or five
Not so much weeds as small trees outward
Or upward from the dry wash, toward hot sun,
Toward the roasting garden, into the paths
What she will do today is walk and take in
Hand her apple staff, leaning on it
As she does now, more and yet more
The nearer arriving to a last heart beat
She comes, and check for vegs and berries.
Here are yet more peas; she's not as
Eager for them as three days ago.
With a bit more busy-ness, she'd go
In for blanching those. Onions and
Leeks too small yet; almost out of
Lettuce; tomatoes on the other hand
Doing well, and some ready already.
Oh, she could cut kale, collards or chard
This morning like any late spring morning,
Only she's hungry for something more.
Do what she will, there are yet no pears,
There are two climbing roses by her gate,
one to each side, with velvet blooms, small,
but heavily scented, suitable for soaps, salves
and potpourri. They blossom out together,
several hundred, perhaps a thousand whorls
French pink, shading to cream, the haunt
of matching shy arachnids. How tall they'd grow
she doesn't know, having twined an arch of willow
whips atop her gate, to bind them to.
In her middle years, her family took this place
and named it for the stony creek, dry
in summer, rolling through between house
and garden. A storm year came; that garden up
and vanished down a river to the sea,
leaving them three dead plum trees and a rose.
She started fresh, by the house. For the rose
She knows the weeds will win. Sometimes, at night,
Hearing them grow in her dreams, she'll wake, grasp
Even in her two hands, a phantom thistle, or
Knotweed, errant blackberry, or teasel.
Now not able to turn and sleep, she'll rise, throw
On her robe, and step out into night;
Walking the way the slim moon shows her,
She throws aside her garden gate and listens.
There might be corn and tomatoes chatting,
Having about as much to say as farmed things.
Even a whisper among the kales and chard --
Whatever such things say. Beyond are beds
Ensnarled in dock, barnyardgrass, bindweed,
Everlasting morning glory vines.
Dire straits; but there's no sound there.
She knows they're biding their time,
Perhaps the seedlings were better off inside,
Really. She's never sure what's best for them,
All down the years trying peat pots, blocks,
Yanking down flats from storage, penciling markers,
Ingratiating herself with baked soils,
Now trying perlite, vermiculite, moss,
Getting out lamps and heaters, rotating flats,
Fighting intruding snails, mice and rats
Or even knotweed and bindweed
Running their tendrils up through brick.
Right now, she wishes she hadn't hurried.
All her helpless babies in cracked clay!
If it doesn't rain tonight, she tells herself,
Never again shall I call April May.
The potting room was a miserable dank
shed, trash-chocked, roofed in plastic, blackberries
ingrown amid bedlam. she dragged it all into
the light, sifting for tools or nails, then
consigning the rest to dump runs. With one son,
the quiet one, she roofed the room with scraps,
tucking, there, or here, oddly-sized old windows.
To the south, a sliding door turned on its side
served for greenhouse glass. A friend's offer
of a chimney to salvage solved the question of how
to floor. With her other son, the tall one, she
rented a long-legged ladder for picking bricks
from the air, frightened at every ragged breath.
They piled them by the plant-room door, and the girl,
When Polyhymnia sends refracted light
shimmering toward parched and shriveled roots,
seeking some semblance of promise kept alive
between her hands, her well, her seeds and soil,
A bit of fluff, a female Anna's, comes
to perch nearby, cocking its tiny head
and waiting. Waiting for the hose to steady
its cold blast toward some fainting eggplant
or tomatillo, ready for a burst of aimed
delight, catching one rainbowed drop of water
short, then flitting to the fence again,
shivering. To the Muse of hymns and farmers it's
a game, to the throbbing ball of feathers more.
Its heart will stop without the gift of rain.
Round the circle of her garden she walks, and stops
again, taking in, as one absent from her own
senses yet unwilling to forgo their gifts,
the half-dimmed light of a low, prepubescent
moon, its influence on lingering clouds,
some few stars brave enough to compete with
mercury vapor or halogen or tungsten,
and taking in also the pungent garlic border,
its enclosure of bean vines, celery, snap peas:
celebratory things, even in this half-light,
this dew of forgotten hours. Her feet,
though well shod, warn her of night, by noting
slow seep of dew round toes and heels.
Her hand, brushing wet night-blooming
jasmine, shrinks from chill. These, and trees
she has encouraged -- apple, plum, pear, cherry,
In summer I rest
beneath maple leaves.
In fall I rake them
for the garden,
to grow and eat
next year
last summer's shade.