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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the lily bed
prelude
the sharp blade pierced the greening grass
and shovelfuls of soil revealed wakened worms
shrinking away from the light
skeptical soil
ten trees arrived in the mail today
their tender trunks scarcely more than twigs
but already I was imagining the bank
of white blossoms in the spring —
hawthorne, dogwood, crab —
and the pale hellebores i’d bought
that would start blooming in the snow
April first
this morning we awoke to a film of frost
sparkling on the grass
as fickle spring once more laughed
in our foolish faces
march 3
this could be the last spring, he said
with a wary look in the over-keen eyes
that peered out from beneath his ball cap brim
the wild garden
all the flowers in the wild garden
have yielded their spirits to autumn’s chill
and become dry brown ghosts, their seeds
falling out of cracked heads and cones
petals
the spring-glad trees
have loosed their blossoms
easter monday
in the park
the japanese magnolia is shedding
its petals
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
may day
thus has may begun
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