The Careless Gardener

It is a careless gardener

Who leaves the lettuce to form great forests

Of inedible lettuce trees

And watches the juniper and strawberries

Become so tangled that everything

In the garden box makes

You a little drunk

A careless gardener

Who leaves the plants to bloom

And grow untrimmed

So that they climb deep

Into the mind’s memory

Of green and growth

A careful

Root cellar of resistance

Against the emptiness

Of winter

There is more than one way to feed

Gardens are food for more than one appetite.

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For more multi-purpose feeding, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

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Memento Mori

We think of the dead

as they connect to us

Through stories and pictures

ours and others

Through the physical reminders

left in their wake

Those who collect the physical

objects of dead women

Can separate the antiques

from the possessors

Can pretend that the light

catching the glass

is new to their eyes only

Some dead we hold onto and some we prefer to forget

Memory of what -and who- have passed is always difficult.

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For more memories of the dead and the living, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

 

 

 

Garden Politics

The slugs were thick in the tomatoes

Curled into the leaves and scraping

holes

For the earwigs to fill

It was fireblight on the plum trunk

The plums defiantly sweet

In the face of death

Garden fruit and vegetables

all

Bearing proud battle scars

–

Nothing ate the zucchini.

Zucchini is a lesson that everyone refuses to learn

Survival is not necessarily a virtue.

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For tales that don’t involve zucchini, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.