The last three summers, as she recalls them,
Her heavy-clay bit of earth opened hexagonally;
Into the depths she stared, seeing dry darkness
So desiccated, she fancied worms and millipedes
In despair had decamped, seeking other worlds.
She poked at crevasses with her stick, finding bottom
Well deeper than twelve inches. Not knowing
How to garden in any but a rain forest, she
Attacked books and websites for some scheme
The budget could be stretched for: shade cloths,
Raised beds, huge-log hugelkulturs, keyhole beds.
All were possible, but her hands, old, worked
In fits and starts; her money allocated elsewhere.
Now she startles, looking at her night sky, so steeped
The cool-weather plants have bolted, and she
Has had to gather the saddest cases.
Even kale, not last year's but this year's, and
Chard are defying the routine she has,
Over decades, established as garden law.
Often she walks through now, knife in hand,
Lopping flowering stalks, vainly trying
Whether some leaves can be kept soft
Even as the heat chases her dream of spring
Away again. Like last year. Like the year before.
There's something to be said for radishes,
Her bowl tells her, which is that it is not
Empty. With arugula and rocket, leaves
Ripped from already woody stems, snipped,
Piled loosely, steamed lightly, stirred
Lazily with duck egg on hot iron
It begins with mare's tails: wisps of ice
That spread, ghostly fingers from
Beyond the southwestern horizon; her
Ears feel the chill as she is planting bulbs.
"Go inside," her chapped hands urge her,
"Inside, your steaming kettle waits."
"Not yet," she replies. In her mind's eye
She watches thousands of daffodils bloom
Where grass grew. She must plant hundreds
If her dream will breathe. Altocumulus,
Those clouds like schools of fish, arrive.
Her hands are hurting her now; cold clay
Milking moisture from gapped skin.
As she bends, shovel in one hand,
Round brown balls of life in the other,
Each destined for a hole along her fence,
This time of year that room is not much visited.
Its herringbone-patterned floor of worn bricks
tilts here and there where rodents have made inroads.
Homemade flats lie heaped in corners; stacks of cells
lean sleepily together; insulation dangles;
tools hang, festooned with webs and dust. Sometimes
when the door has been set ajar, a towhee wanders in,
becomes confused at light from so many windows,
beats itself silly, then rests, is eventually found
and shown the way out. There's not much
an old lady can do but wait, watching for
earlier suns to rise, for petrichor,
for that sudden dislocation brought on
by stepping into sunshine by a southern wall.
Then, after one jonquil blooms by way of
She stands in wet and likes it; drips rolling
around the brim of her split-bamboo conical
hat to fall on thirsting clay. Here's
weather at last, there having been sun,
sun, sun, a lip-cracking and tree-splitting
dry, since the vernal equinox. Nothing
had been vernal about it, and her land
knew so. The very fir limbs sulked;
willows on creek banks browned up and died;
birds fell everlastingly silent, dropping
on needle-sharp tufts of what had been haymow
beneath their perches in rattling cedars;
fish sought pools deeper than any there were,
crowding in together, fin by fin,
gulping and grunting, then rolling over
to bump along hot, slimed rocks and lodge
While watching forests comb those wet bellies,
All grey and louring, of the heartless clouds,
I wondered how the heavy earth breathes
Thus more than dampened, more than drowned
In so much rain. The very snails could gasp,
Nudging toward such daylight as they might,
Grudged them by the endless drops, dropping.
Fear for my crops, standing in chill pools
Or bent, prostrated, shambled, lying left and
Right, I feel, yet not enough to go and see.
There are tree branches, if I go, ready to pull
Hair, poke eyes, and shower me to my skin,
Every direction, along each path and bed.
Running streamlets ease a darkening land
All river-bound, discovering the slightest slope,
Inland being anathema to them,
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.
As the rains return again, she notes, almost
in passing, how her strait love remains;
how darkness, wind, and sorry days of
work and worry cannot shake it. We are not
built to last; we know that. Some speak of life
as it were stark tragedy alone, a
trudging from diaper to death bed, doomed
because end it must. Others try, by seeking
comedic relief, to put such gloom aside,
assuming that to live brightly today will,
somehow, pay for the pain of barely living
later, when last years have but begun.
Her truth: somewhere between. She would,
if the gods permitted, lose herself in your eyes
every day of forever, but knowing this
will end, and relatively soon, makes her not
The storm broke, and it rained,
And water rose in the pool,
And frogs hopped into the gutter,
With their skins of yellow and green,
And just their eyes shining above the surface
Of the warm solution of slime.
At night, when fireflies trace
Light-lines between the trees and flowers
Exhaling perfume,
The frogs speak to each other
In rhythm. The sound is monstrous,
But their voices are filled with satisfaction.
In the city I pine for the country;
In the country I long for conversation —
Our happy croaking.
I have visited men's rooms
in several bars
with the rows
of urinals like old men
and the six-sided odor
of disinfectant.
I have felt the sadness
of the small white tiles,
of the repeated shapes
and the unavoidable whiteness.
I have understood
that some afternoon
when it rains and the streets
blacken with umbrellas,
a white army
from all of the men's rooms
I drove through
endless rain,
seeking one merchant
who might give aid
to an empty hand.
This world's events
pass over me
like summer showers.
In my old mind
wind and sun
go free.