“Gardens are creations,
they are children,
they are what we build to decorate
and nourish our lives. They are
the connections by which we measure
all things that happen.”
What it is to grow
a garden in the Age of Terror
is a collection of poems that
chronicles my own life’s journey
with gardens.
Coming soon from Fernwood Press
Selected poem
Breath taken
When I struggled the most
hauling or spreading
or tilling or potting
sweat beading
soil like coffee
grounds crusting my nails
I’d get angry
at sickness, at plague
at virus, little bugs here
fungus there, leaves partially
chewed from worms,
and of course deer
that left nothing untouched
his smoke like death curls leaving
the screen on a mission
to trounce the scent of the dew he’d say
How’s it going out there?
on his porch in his chair,
the garden alive and staring
my speech numb
now I believe
I should have said
It’s goingthe way of the smoke.
Wonder led us out of caves
gave our hands tasks
allowed our brains to ponder
Our connections to landscapes
produce the thoughts and revelations
that form the core of our human experience –
We think great thoughts
But would never presume to be
In Einstein’s Head
Available through Book Nook
Selected poem
Crow
Before splitting
into fronds of palms
the tree grows one tall stalk
that juts straight into the sky,
upon which on this day
a crow sits at tippy top
and I, standing where observers lodge,
watch it as kindred folk.
This crow rules on the edge of its point,
knows the silliness of commanding from the unsteady summit.
He does it anyway.
We are the same.
My summit, I tell him, is higher.
Gravity does not ask whose perch is grander.
Featured poem
Why I’ll Miss the Hens
I never thought about them, the hens
who are sick and dying of bird flu,
until I heard talk of Easter and people said
the potatoes will have to be dyed instead
and I wondered if dye would take to a potato or would the skin
repel it, as if knowing it were second rate?
I thought of the egg-o-mat egg vending machine
that sat on a farm in New Jersey
where the industrious feathery hens laid eggs plentiful,
that were purchased with a swing of a nob
and that was when my partner texted that he got the last crate
of a dozen and I said geez, I’ll miss the hens, the mothers of eggs
not because of Easter and not because I’ve known hens or raised hens
but because
they are the birds of stories and poetry,
life and nourishment, rebirth, renewal
they are why the rooster crows,
I’ll miss
the way they firmly place themselves in their nests
eggs warm and safe
mothers who came first to guard their bounty
abundant, once, as caressing
as human touch.
First published in Poetry Super Highway