Poem: Garden Jealousies

Garden Jealousies

I sometimes wonder

If the grass in the yard grows jealous

Of little alyssum in all its blooming glory?

Or if alyssum thinks how grand

It would be to live ceramically

In a pot, or if it would somehow be

Better to be a rose, coming back 

Every year without even worrying

How much he’d bloomed?

Maybe the rose just wished

To be that pumpkin sat

On the porch all jack-o-lanterned out

‘Neath all the falling leaves,

Or little green bean

Picked faithfully and cooked

For a family of four

Or maybe more.

Maybe they all envy

Sunflower, shining in the sun

Beckoning the bees

Hanging on until the freeze.

Clematis clings jealously

To the Trellis—

Or is it just me that is jealous?

October 2022

About This Poem:

Sometimes you just wonder and I like to garden, so I impose human thinking onto plants in this one.

 

Poem: (autumn) (spring) (winter) (summer)

(autumn) (spring) (winter) (summer)

Leaves fall (autumn) and I rake them up,

Placing them on the garden (spring) where

Still standing dead (winter) sunflowers feed birds.

To think just a few weeks ago they were (summer) 

(Green, not) yellow or red (or) falling from the trees 

Sometimes knocked off by pesky squirrels (red)

And picked up by me (green) thinking of all

The work I have to do and (yellow) don’t want to.

But here I am anyway, now white headed (winter)

Raking up all these beautiful leaves (autumn)

And wondering why I ever thought (summer) I 

Had much time to spend (spring) with kids

Who are gone with the leaves (autumn) soon

To be buried beneath the snows (winter)

Like me or some buried ancestor (red)

Taking pride in me out here raking (green) leaves.

I guess that’s what living is all about (yellow)

Never taking time to notice (yellow) things

When you should (green) and getting angry

When you should(n’t) (red).

November 2022

About This Poem

I spend an inordinate amount of time raking leaves in the fall and it never ceases to impress upon me aspects of living, or, in this case, life itself. I titled it after all of the seasons because they are all there in the act of raking and living. The seasons are parenthetical to the act itself, because it's obviously autumn. They are also not in any logical order because life tends to jumble its seasons, at least in our minds. Right now it's in the 90s but I'm recalling autumn winds and raking leaves as if it were happening right now because, in a sense, it is.

 

Poem: Adrift Upon the Lake

Adrift Upon the Lake

Adrift upon the lake in my

canoe, I see cloudbreak make sigh

as glass turns to rings

crashing into things 

as heart sings

here to cry

of isolated beauty here

where I float longing to be near

engulfed in your pools 

of ringlets. Oh fool,

here I cool

as you hear

my aching moan to be right here

swirling into this perfect mere

where you wrap your arms 

about me in charms

where none harms

drowning here.

Adrift upon the lake in my

embrace, clouds of your love are nigh

as glass turns to rings

crashing into things.

My heart sings 

to your sigh.

About This Poem

I love to just drift on a lake in a boat every once in awhile. In rereading this poem it seems dark. Sometimes, I suppose, my thoughts are dark, but generally, near water, I am buoyed up and feel great. There's a little of that here also. I don't actually know when I wrote it. I typed it up in June a couple of years ago. It seems appropriate for summer. I think it could use a little more editing, but here's the draft.