spirea

at the little grey house on the corner
the spirea has begun to bloom,
delicate white blossoms creeping mistily down its long, slender branches.

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april showers

after weeks of dry weather —
or merely a tease of moisture in the form of fog
or snow or sleet or drizzle —
the spring skies have finally broken open

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thorn

in the poppy bed
there’s a stubborn weed
i never can seem to kill

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the lily bed

if i had any rage i took it out on the lily bed and its web of ingrown roots the fruit of thirty years of spawning tigers i scythed and hoed, slicing through sod separating innumerable worms from their other ends and cleaving through the rusty orange roots that choked the ground until, at last,…

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prelude

the sharp blade pierced the greening grass
and shovelfuls of soil revealed wakened worms
shrinking away from the light

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japanese iris

this afternoon i have been digging the japanese iris out of the vegetable garden
and stuffing the muddy rhizomes into grocery sacks in preparation
for the making of their new bed

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holy saturday

we planted the peas today
rolled their plump green bodies
into the black bacterial dust
gardeners call inoculant
and then tucked them one by one
under the soil

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