Puberty
A child overtaken by change
endures her sickness
in the garden,
tells me
the navy may land there,
for pen and ink have begun
to do business.
Poems on the topic: garden
Poems on the topic “garden” on Poets.by.
Preprandial
the table laid
for supper in the garden—
calling his name
Owl
an owl calling
in the garden
I go out and vomit
Pillow talk
Talking in bed
about our frugal life.
What I would do
if I were a knight:
keep hope
we live to save
something from time,
go out alone to the garden
and see East India—
which we are to meet
tomorrow
in bed.
Drought
Rain has forsaken us. However much water I give my gardens, it still isn’t enough. Tomato and squash vines wilt. Corn leaves curl. The potatoes gave up altogether, leaving me a half-sized harvest. I feel like the opposite of King Midas: Everything I touch turns to dust. But let me have one wish. I’ll keep it secret even from myself, and carry it back to earth’s ear in a bucket.
sinkholy
fields resting on straw-
thin stalactites
In the Fullness of Time
Six weeks after I planted potatoes, they are finally all up, the latest leaves no bigger than the ears of the mice I was sure had dug up and eaten them, especially after a series of holes appeared in each hill. But it’s been unusually cold this spring, and sprouts were simply taking their time. Our neighbors had urged patience, and they were right.
All this waiting to see what happens with the pandemic would be hard to bear if I didn’t also have something to wait for: a garden growing and changing day by day now, so that time doesn’t merely pass like some lifeless assembly line, but unfolds, ramifies, flourishes, bears fruit.
even as
I pull weeds my beard
keeps on growing
evening garden
Putting a Garden In
Putting a garden in so often entails putting wildlife out. You develop an adversarial relationship with nature, fencing, trapping, shooting, poisoning, getting a guard dog… It’s this sad reality that many years ago turned me against what had been the reigning passion of my youth.
onion bed
pulling out
wild onions
Modes
in a letter
I go with the discourse
and stay to discourse
in love
I varnish a crucifix
and call it love
in the garden
I am of the garden
and come home
The Hollow (17)
where we fought many
a rotten tomato battle
common snakeroot
lawn and gardens gone
back to meadow
the buildings’ straight lines
no more turning
even the electric meter
is digital now
barn that once
housed an elephant
its great grey-green roof
Threnody
A cop with a backpack sprayer
poisoning an urban garden—
why should I dream of this?
I carry out a dead houseplant,
but can’t find a snow-free spot
to lay it to rest.
The house finch whose eye disease
prevents him from migrating
warbles on and on.
Winter gardener
I was land-hungry in my youth.
In the summer I turned soil
and in winter hoped for snow—
a Platonic kind of field,
rich in solitude as any desert
and as free of weeds,
the leafless rose in the yard
alone with its snarl
of barbed canes.
Critic
A male hummingbird
circles the metal pink
flamingo in my garden,
circles & touches it
with its all-purpose bill.
Amazed? Perplexed?
Combatative? Appalled?
The sun sinks behind
the trees & the first
katydids start calling
as the hummer zips
in for a landing on
the single rusty leg,
perching sideways
just below the tail,
& taps the pink wing
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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