July 1
while we were gone the lettuce bolted the pea pods grew outsized and tough still, full of pearls to dry, let harden and plant again next year— an absurd generosity asking only for some time
All posts tagged: gardening
September 7
it’s those in between days now the shock of cold at dawn but then the old familiar heat red flag watch east of the Cascades the fires taking off late the spiders out early even instinct stupefied it’s time to accept the tomatoes on the vine have gone mealy and sour there is a cost to holding out too long a loss in holding on I take the chicken wire off the garden beds and […]
December 8
Blink and it’s gone the gingko bare, not golden any old tree now another bleak gray day could be any Northern city really from this low height every houseplant shoved up by the window for the the briefest glimpse of light, probably too cold and dry for the orchid but mild discomfort soft complaint that’s how you know you’re alive the crepe jasmine that never unfurls its blooms, waiting for something that never arrives, sometimes […]
April 29
My heart is over by the budbreak far far over in true sun and night no passivity of rain it falls unequivocally as the light comes down in bars full chords of golden rays and the shadows palpable. My heart is just one cautious note a finch at the field’s edge singing it is so very late and yet still early a frost would be the end irrevocably but the leaves unfurl like tiny sails […]
December 24
The high was still low. In the shade the cold was bitter, and when the wind picked up– Three arbors of grapes, overgrown, neglected, and some chipped clipping shears. What makes a return prodigal? A morass, deadwood, suckers, shoots the color of rust, dried blood, arteries, and the ashen ghosts of summer after summer. Excise, and find the form inherent. To finish a thing, just one thing, done in its proper season and sequence. A […]
March 15
Afternoon as threshold, precipice. Mid-week, mid-month, equipoise and the cry of a woodpecker. They say the snow’s all done, and now that it’s light later we hacked back the blueberries that won’t produce, severely, taking them down to the ground, provoking life from dormancy, or: hoping. An hour later, still, shears in hand going at spouts and suckers in the bay laurel, getting dark out, and cold, still, to bring order! An evening act, as […]
May 27
Life-red, the stems of the maple sapling, the spinach that’s already bolted in the heat, unseasonable, unless we accept that a change has been made, summer starting earlier now, outdoors at least, where the green is frank, the crimson exposed, a leaf is a leaf, nothing less, nothing more.
March 29
A return to the ground to sow more seeds prayers in a way when they are grown where will I be thinking back on this moment on how far we’ve both come the soil is cool and the morning birds are not alarmed now accustomed to this custom and oh today how it felt like an ending but roots I guess do their best work unseen.
March 19
This another sort of entrapment– the weight of ought and should even now even here waking so late to a colorless sky and still-bare branches backlit and immobile I went to stake the peas with sticks to try to gather and balance things now well beyond reason now well past care even the hermit juncos stopping to observe my shoddy weaving– silence and mania in this setting of a rescinded spring of days that can’t […]
March 17
(2) Wan sunrise on the frills of fledgling pea vines a red hue betrays these sprouts as beets and here the dumb exuberance of the radishes yes I have grown cold please accept these as my excuse
OPTIONAL POETRY 