Watering wants

Starting with a seed
that has broken its hull
which contains all spores
solidified
which is the same as
visualizing the details

And so where to sow is also
of grave significance
to its future growth.
The miracle is in waiting
and forgetting
you are waiting
this is the cultivation
of fertilization.

Nor will you know
where or when or how
until there are disturbing signs
of a breakthrough below,
still too slow
to see move-ment

Lightly,
nourish the belief
that wishes dig deep
and are just enough
to support the heights and weight
of multi-layered wants and
buried wishes
that may flourish
or become part of more
starting with a seed...



Painting By Целебровский, Пётр Иванович (1859-1921) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ahora, Flora

Beat-up pick-up
sideboard, plywood
PVC poles hold hoes
and Co. land-scrapers
dirt brown men
burlap bags bulge bulk
fronds flap, waving bye
bougainvillea leaves
the wind in its wake
vined venomous snakes
coil and toil
pushing pedals,
nipped at the bud
the garden view
flowers wild
migrant faces
in full bloom.



Image By Unknown or not provided, taken on California Hwy. c. 1935 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Garden Warden

Just as we are the Writers

of our Life story,

Puppeteers of Plot,

we play God

in our Gardens.

Sowing seeds to grow our Eden,

stitched in asphalt cracks,

heathens weight perched on hunched backs.

Fairy dust seeds and pixie weeds plume in bloom,

sprinkled and spread, they lay in bed.

Sapping up the cool cement sky,

dripping with indenture,

incensed by concentration.

Gathering the steely clouds breath

in our ewer, we pour out Life in buckets.

Trapping it in our pitchers,

bringing to light a chrysalis

of our Creation.

Digging our trenches

deep, embedding nourishment

-dam river goes where it dam well-

-renavigate –re-irrigate-

plans, tends, pre-supposes,

suspends with droughtful neglect

still waiting, doing Time.

Corn rows abundantly lined.

Out-fitted, out-witted, de-pitted,

ripening in repercussion,

footed in this fallow sphere-

the Fall plummets from labored limb.

Free to stay, there's no other way.

Room to grow into what it's meant to be,

making shade under the Kismet Tree.

Trapped in its own grave,

the dirty deed is done.

Parching in the sun, it thirsts for more

juicy fruits of forgetfulness.

Tethered, the sapling stretches,

it can see the garden Gate, choked,

wrapped in thorny barbed vines.

And beyond the green grass glimmers,

beckoning in sinful diamond dew.

The only sentence the Kismet Tree knew,

“Life without parole”,

but still pretends

there's a different End.

Image By OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons.

A child asked Emily-

Where do tears come from?

Wet-I've been-Where

Tears come from-You have

dipped in the Abyss too?

Sprung from spaces-unseen-

Joy has never been-There

to melt away the bitterness

of an icy raw day

Seeping and Weeping push through-

guarded Gates-solid as Blinking

little trifles-Tears-like watercolors

Bleeding flowers drooping wet in the Garden

Image of painting by Winslow Homer (1878) 'Girl in Garden' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.