Tag Archives: gardening

Sowing and reaping

Last week of March, and I suppose it is time for my customary “prepping the garden and sowing greens post.” One thing I like about gardening is that there’s constant change; each year differs somewhat from previous ones, in terms of weather/climate and in terms of my situation/plans. This year, not much seed-starting indoors. Instead, I’ll sow direct and purchase seedlings locally. So what I grow in the vegetable patch will depend on what looks good at the farmer’s market or the nurseries. It will be a surprise.

The garden does need some prep work, however, and greens need to be sown early. Today I planted spinach, lettuces, purple kale, carrots, coriander. And I set up a raised bed, which I finally moved from its previous spot, for herbs. I listened for returning migrant birds, noticed little flying insects, and found grubs, worms, and numerous arthropods (millipedes, garden centipedes, sowbugs). The usual suspects! Mild days in early spring are salubrious to body and soul.

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The reaping to which I refer in the title of this post is metaphorical, as spring isn’t a big time for bringing in the sheaves, though in a few weeks the winter wheat will be ripe. I feel I have reaped some joy from a recent poetry reading I gave at the library of my former employer, DeSales University, and how often do we feel that way? It’s a gift! Dr. Steve Myers invited me to read with three of the alums of the MFA program DSU now offers, and last night I found myself back in the library where my office used to be (once I finally escaped from the basement where I’d been located for 17 years). The audience was a mix of undergraduate and graduate students and friends who were kind enough to show up on a Wednesday night. It’s wonderful to feel appreciated now and then. 🙂

I haven’t been giving many readings lately or even attending open mics. Evenings and nights are not my best time, but the college is very nearby and I really was pleased to be able to participate…Best Beloved drove me there and back, so everything was manageable. I read some quite old poems and some quite new ones, and a few in-between from my books. And I sold a few books! Always a thrill. I am dwelling in gratitude today.

One of the best things at the event was seeing a former student who was one of my writing tutors and who now works at DeSales. She’s also lately enrolled in the MFA program. What a joy to catch up with a person I met as a bright 18-year-old with a natural talent for writing, who’s pursuing creative writing now–as a mother of two, and nearing 40–not so different from my own circuitous path in poetry. Such are the rewards of teaching…occasionally, I do miss it.

Lots of rain in the forecast for next week. Things will green up, and maybe those seeds will sprout.

Comparisons

I keep a day-by-day garden journal, ten years at a time (the one I use is here, from Lee Valley). This record often proves useful and is an interesting way to compare how the seasons unfurl from year to year. After 30 years of record-keeping, for example, I can see that the summers here are hotter and drier than they used to be, and that winters are far less consistent. I note which plants thrive and which fail, and observe when invasive species arrive and when certain plants or animals seem to experience a die-off–or a flourishing. As I used to tell my students in composition and rhetoric classes, basic comparisons are a toe-in-the-water way to begin learning how to do full-fledged analysis. In what ways are things alike? In what ways do they differ?

Let’s look at February, surely my least-favorite month. In 1997, the month was mild, even warm; snowdrops bloomed on the 21st (in 1996, the bloom was the 23rd, in 2000, the 24th). Fast-forward: in 2023, they blossomed on February 13th, in 2024 on February 8th. Similarly for the bloom times of iris reticulata and witchhazel. Last year, however–2025–we had arctic air pushing through due to warming at the poles and other effects. The snowdrops opened late, on February 25th. This year, we’ve had a colder-than-average midwinter. Today, after yet another snowstorm, there’s an additional 5″ of snow cover over existing snow. I doubt I’ll see snowdrops for another week or so. But you never know. Galanthus are resourceful, having originated possibly in the Pyrenees or even Thracia, and they have adapted to many regions quite happily. They can even bloom under a light snow cover.

Comparing seasons from year to year has helped me to plan my garden, but it’s always a bit of a crap shoot. Earth’s varying meteorological systems mean that humans endeavoring to grow crops or plan for weather events will often be surprised. Nature is unpredictable, no matter how many analyses we project. The recent snowstorm here was, if not wildly inaccurately predicted, at least not following the most expected computer models. Which is as it should be. Artificial intelligence and algorithms are far from foolproof.

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What will the weather be like on March 7th? I’m planning to attend the book fair day at AWP in Baltimore that day, but always “weather permitting.” Last year in Los Angeles, I liked having the option of just attending one day of the event–sans panels and such, which overload my introvert personality. But Baltimore is a 3-hour drive from here, so weather must permit! The past five years, March 6-8 has been mild and reasonably fair; so says my garden journal, so maybe I will get there. If so, I’ll return bearing poetry collections…

Meantime, my mother will turn 93 this week. I wish celebration were in order, but she seems to be retreating into a zoning world of her own, less familiar to us and less aware of her surroundings. Once again, comparisons: who she was for most of my life and who she is (or is not) now. She’s weathered much in her lifetime. The analysis: I don’t love her any less.

Unsettling

We got some rain on Saturday, which we’ve needed, and dismal cold rainy January days are perfect for settling down with a book. I’m reading The Unsettling of America, Culture & Agriculture (1977) by poet, writer, farmer, educator, activist Wendell Berry, still working at 91–his book Sabbath Poems was published in 2024. I’m much more familiar with Berry’s poetry than his prose, though he’s written at least half a dozen novels and many books of nonfiction. This text, I’ve since learned, is one of his more famous–it’s been revised and re-issued six times. The copy I got from the library is the original version and features cover blurbs by Gary Snyder, Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, and Stewart Brand, among others; Publishers Weekly summed up the book as “a cool, reasoned, lucid and at times poetic explanation of what agribusiness and the mechanization of farming are doing to the American fabric.”

Which is a fairly good one-sentence précis, though Berry’s wording often strikes me as more passionate than “cool,” and agribusiness is only one aspect of his critique. I was in high school in the 1970s, and at the time it seemed average Americans were beginning to recognize that pollution and overpopulation could be problematic, that maybe we needed to eat more natural and wholesome foods, and that establishing an Earth Day might help people turn focus toward the planet. Simultaneously, we had Earl Butz as Agriculture Secretary, a man who ended many New Deal programs to help “small” farmers and who encouraged large (eventually, corporate) farms. Butz appears several times in this book, and no wonder; he and Berry debated the topic in public and in print, and their thinking was almost diametrically opposed concerning the philosophy behind agriculture. Berry’s book is a social and philosophical argument that is only somewhat dated and really quite prescient, though he might come off as mildly curmudgeonly to today’s readers. Or maybe not so prescient. He was simply paying attention.

The sections of the book that most resonate with me are those in which he writes of nurturing and relationships, and points out that good relationships involve responsible actions and collaborative, mutual care whether they are marital, family, or social relationships or relationships with the soil, the flora and fauna, the whole planet. He predicts a future in which people live in their houses and not with the land, or even within their communities, and where wilderness is “conserved” so that it can be exploited for entertainment and scenic views. People in the US, he says, don’t feel responsible for the land on which they live; they don’t understand its cycles, its weather patterns, its waterways; their property is merely property–a commodity for convenience and investment. I’d say that future is already upon us.

Thus, Berry has made me think more deeply about my relationship with “my” property. If you’ve read this blog for awhile, you may notice how often I consider weather, dirt, local animals, insects (especially invasive or non-native ones), plants, tree diseases, water–I’m no farmer, but I am a gardener and do feed myself at least partly from my own backyard. I take almost daily walks around the perimeter of our 6+ acres, poking around in the hedgerows, scanning the sky, looking down at walnuts and animal scat, watching for new buds or coloring leaves or bird nests or wildflowers. I worry over droughts and hailstorms and flooding. Climate change concerns me in very local and specific ways, not just in general.

One could say I’m at least trying to nurture the earth. I’ve made many mistakes along the way and done some damage that I’m learning how to rectify; I have also realized that I have to accept some changes, such as incursions by invasive species, because they are beyond my control. Through the almost 30 years we’ve lived on this land, I’ve tried to understand it better. After all, we built a house on it. The soil was hard-packed, acidic, overused from previous decades of corn-growing, full of stones, sumac, and asiatic rose bushes, a fallow field that hadn’t been planted or farmed in decades but didn’t necessarily need me to tend it. It wasn’t my family’s land, and I didn’t intend to end my days here; however, I figured if I was going to live on this spot, I had better do whatever tending and nurturing it might require.

Which is about the best I can do as far as a relationship with the land in which I dwell, and about the best any of us can do in any long-term relationship: try to understand it, get acquainted, do some research, make plenty of observations (maybe take notes), and nurture what seems to need special attention and care. The land has given me much more than I’ve ever given it. It’s offered shelter, beauty, an education, food, the companionship of animal life, cricket sounds, tree frog songs, firefly lights on long summer nights, open spaces for my children to play in, owl calls and fox kenning, the grace of leaping whitetails, dead-fall wood we can burn in winter, forest-bathing, hammock-swaying, inspiration for writing. The wonderful porch here, where I often sit to write in my journal, opens a view to the meadow out back. So many poems started on that porch, with that view…

That’s how the earth nurtures me. May I be somehow worthy of it.

photo by David Sloan 2020

Reading in shade

It’s the time of year when, according to the lunisolar calendar, we move from 小暑 xiǎoshǔ–when the heat begins to get unbearable–to 大暑 dàshǔ, the hottest time of the year. It may also be the greenest time: my garden suddenly plumps out huge squash leaves, giant sunflowers, masses of beans, zinnias, basil. The tomatoes are finally burgeoning after a late start. It’s too hot to spend much time weeding and pruning: I harvest what I can and retreat to the shade as soon as possible, where I can read.

A friend recently lent me a book of short stories, Human Sacrifices, by María Fernando Ampuero, an Ecuadoran writer. It’s been ably translated by Frances Riddle, and the stories are startling and harrowing. Not something to check out for a light summer read on the beach, but memorable and thought-provoking. One critic says Ampuero’s work is South American gothic. I don’t agree–and I think it’s kind of a cheesy shortcut in a review–but perhaps that phrase does convey the flavor of some of her stories. Anyway, it’s always a treat to find a writer whose work I’m unfamiliar with and whose work is admirable.

I’ve been taking a break from reading poetry, though that wasn’t planned on my part. July brought a wedding, a death, and some travel; and now, in the intense summer doldrums, I prefer to read for entertainment or information, or just to pass the time. Poetry takes more brain and heart space for me, more “intentionality” or concentration, than most non-fiction books or novels do. This is not to say any other genre is less demanding in and of itself. It’s a personal quirk: I am more attentive when reading poetry than I am when I read other forms of literature, probably because I’m unconsciously (or consciously) endeavoring to learn something of the craft and style and context of poems by other poets. It’s a method of processing how to write poems. But as I have no plans to write fiction or non-fiction, I read such genres for entirely different reasons.

Usually I try to read outside on the porch, in the hammock, on the garden swing. Some days it is just too damned hot and humid, though, and I resort to the air-conditioning indoors. The indoor climate has no flies or gnats but also no bird songs, cicada hums, cricket calls, breezes, scents of summer. Indoors is less than ideal (except in the teeth of winter!).

Recently I’ve added a shade garden where the chicken run was in decades past, under the umbrella of our largest white oak. I haven’t yet added a bench, but a lawn chair suffices for now. Alas, it is a bit buggy, but so is the hammock. The pleasure of summer reading in shade outweighs the inconvenience of the minor fauna…most of the time.

Back in PA

Last year at this time, I had covid and was languishing in bed, unable to tend to the garden. A regional drought meant I really should have been watering the new plants; and it also kept the weeds firmly rooted, fighting for dominance in the vegetable patch. This year, I timed a trip to New Mexico just when I ought to have been harvesting spinach and planting out tomatoes, beans, and squash. Oops. And then it rained buckets the whole time I was away (much-needed rain, but…). Therefore, the garden situation was not ideal. But garden situations seldom are ideal because Nature does its own thing regardless of my plans.

At any rate, eastern Pennsylvania finally moderated its weather enough that I got the weeds and the seeds and transplants more or less under control this past week–“control” being a general term subject to, well, Nature. The peonies bloomed gorgeously on schedule, as did the nefarious multiflora roses and Russian olives that plague the hedgerow. The catbirds and Eastern kingbirds are back; the robins’ first brood has hatched; the orioles are insistent in the walnut trees and brilliant in the garden, chasing the barn swallows. I’m not doing much writing, though I drafted one or two beginnings of poems. Outdoors takes precedence–not that I can’t write out of doors, I often do so. But poems can wait in a way the garden cannot.

And, speaking of poems (and Pennsylvania), I returned from my trip to find this Keystone Poetry anthology awaiting: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09990-3.html–the followup to 2005’s Common Wealth anthology, also edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple.

The new anthology, 20 years after the initial one, has poems by about 180 poets–yes, I am one of them–covering the corners and the center of the Keystone State. I like it even better than the first collection, and it is clear the editors learned much from the experience of curating poems and creating a cohesive “experience” of the regions. Granted, since I know both of the editors personally and appreciate their poetry and their visions, I may be biased. But that’s okay. Objectively, I truly get how huge an undertaking this was and how well it has turned out. For educators, there is a section at the close of the anthology full of suggestions for reading, writing critically, and writing creatively based on this anthology, and even in comparison with the previous one. As both editors are college professors who teach creative writing and critical writing, these appendices are well-thought out and worthwhile.

I miss the aridity of New Mexico, which seems to benefit my overall health. And I miss my daughter immensely. But springtime in eastern PA has many compensations, not the least of which are blooming even as I write.

Correspondences

Dear Beejay,

Remember how we used to correspond by email every week? Sometimes more often. You, the best correspondent ever, though we never wrote paper letters–in those pre-internet years, we’d lost touch, moved too often; no postal mail from you until, once we were connected again, you sent me a birthday card. And tomorrow is your birthday. So here’s your birthday email. You see? I didn’t forget.

It remains dry here. That spate of rainy days in early April? Over with and barely a half an inch since then. I’m watering my veg garden daily. Today I sowed another row of spinach. The first and third sowings are doing well, but the second sowing didn’t germinate–can’t figure out why not. The lettuces and other greens are looking good, and the strawberry plants are in bloom. I even took a chance and planted some zucchini seeds. The task of thinning lettuce and carrots is indeed tedious, but it is a lovely day and the air is mild; and frankly, thinning carrots is less tedious than sending poems out to literary journals, I know you’d agree.

I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary poetry. It comforts me somehow, even when the poems are sad or angry poems (that seems to reflect the times, which poetry can do). Your own writing, who has it? Does it exist on some hard drive somewhere? You always were excellent at organizing things. A talent I envy and do not possess.

Anyway, I did a bit of weeding to prep for the tomatoes and peppers when the seedlings are ready to transplant, but I got a late start on them and may not even move them to the garden until after my trip to New Mexico. Right now we’re getting pollen blow here. I expect your pollen blow was over two or three weeks ago, and that the azaleas are past their showy bloom time down there. I know how you love azalea season. And the beach–I guess you won’t get there this year.

I do find myself, at odd moments, wondering about your cats. When our lives were routine and there was nothing of interest to write about, we could always turn to cat anecdotes. Today, my Nessie joined me in the garden while I was working on the carrot patch. The catnip plant in the herb bed has leafed out quite early, and Nessie stretched his whole lean body over it and lolled himself into a snooze-fest, exposing his white belly. You would have laughed. You always called tuxedo cats “Holsteins.” I’m insulted on Nessie’s behalf.

When a person we love dies, I guess there’s an impulse–almost an instinct–to memorialize them, at least among those of us in “Western societies.” Or maybe it is a human impulse, I can’t say. I have written too many poems of elegy, and there will be more; but sometimes, it takes awhile before I feel I have the right perspective or frame of mind to write about them, or about my feelings of loss. Today, so much reminded me of you, Beejay, that I had to write something. If not a poem, then an epistle–the way I used to write to you, of ordinary things, the garden, cats, seasons, poetry.

Happy birthday, wherever you are.

Crabgrass

I have been at work in the vegetable garden during the past few dry, sunny, late-summer days–it has been rather droughty here–and pulling up weeds in an effort to get an early start on putting the patch to bed for autumn. I have decided not to do any late-season sowing this year, and therefore I can pretty much tear up everything if I feel like it. Today I was thinking about my mother-in-law, who died in 2017, but who was sometimes my partner in the garden, or I in hers, when we were younger. I learned a great deal about ornamentals from her.

At her property, crabgrass was a particular scourge. I remember us weeding flower beds together while she muttered, “Crabgrass! Always crabgrass, how I hate it!” It struck me odd at the time that she pronounced it “crebgrass,” with the first “a” like a short “e”, because she said the word “crab” and similar words with an open short “a.” It was almost as though she reserved that pronunciation to express her ire at this particular weed. She liked weeding at my house partly because I had so little crabgrass. Plenty of other weeds, but not much crabgrass.

Our weeding together took place over 15 years ago, when my gardens were on the new side, maybe a decade old. Today, however, I find my vegetable patch very much colonized by digitaria sanguinalis…one of the finger grasses, a very successful weed that can produce 150,000 seeds per plant. My garden now hosts both smooth and large crabgrass; the former is much easier to pull, though it can set seed even when it is mowed to under an inch in height! Large crabgrass, when it gets going, can grow over a foot tall and have a base rosette of 10″ with a star-like (or crab-like) set of leaves and quite tenacious roots, for an annual.

While I worked (too late, I really should have gotten to the weeds long before they began to set seed), I heard my mother-in-law in my mind: “Crebgrass! How I hate it.” Well, dearest Gene, I have finally encountered the Eurasian colonizer in my own gardens. And I miss having you around to sympathize with my plight.

 Maudib | Credit: Getty Images

There’s a metaphor here, I know there is. Maybe there’s a poem in this experience, too? For the time being, pulling weeds reminds me of someone I loved–and takes my mind off of another person I love, whose dwindling and decline (her “diminishing”) stay uneasily in the background of everything I do these days.

In the between-season time, with autumn almost upon us, I want to remind myself of the joys that come along with the crabgrass. Such as the brown crickets and the morning glories and the goldenrod…and memories of people for whom I have cared a great deal.

~

Helpless

The weeding continues apace. I no longer do a clean rake-up of the gardens in autumn, because I now know that bees and other creatures overwinter in foliage debris; but it is imperative that I get the worst of the vines and perennial invasives out of the beds. We had a bit of rain recently, so I went out to claw and pull. Underneath the spreading Japanese maple, I found this:

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At first, I thought I’d found a fungus. Upon poking, I realized it appeared to be sections of a paper wasp nest. Hmmm. It took some craning of my neck and crawling much further beneath the tree, but there it was–the remains of a paper wasp hive dangling above me. Certainly it looked unoccupied, but I crept out from under the boughs just in case.

Under the tree, and twined throughout the flowerbed, I found quite a few sumac seedlings and plenty of poison ivy vines. Sumac and poison ivy are native plants, not invasive species like loosestrife and wintercreeper, but I don’t fancy having them in my perennial gardens. More yanking will be required soon.

~

At least I am doing something that, while rather disheartening–the weeds will always come back, weeding’s as endless as housework–keeps me moving and outdoors and occupied so that my mind whirs around less. It appears I’m weeding as a coping strategy while my mother continues to spiral toward whatever is next for her. Hospice care. Death. The inevitable, with the unknown “when”.

What bothers me most about her situation is how helpless she has become. My mom endured some childhood traumas, times when she truly was helpless. She learned to find and deal with her anger, with trouble and conflict, with physical pain, but she hates feeling helpless. And over the years, her inherent pragmatism and stubbornness, as well as her patience and a little emotional counseling, have served her well. I can only recall once when I saw her feeling helpless (and only briefly). It rattled me, but I was also impressed by how quickly she regained emotional equilibrium and took a small action toward…well, toward not being helpless.

And now, she is. Helpless, I mean. She cannot speak, feed herself, walk, or even sit up unassisted in bed. The prognosis for her recovery is so-so. She may manage to regain a little self-sufficiency. Or not. After all, she’s 91 years old.

The paper wasp hive seems like an analogy to me. When it has served its purpose, for all that it sheltered its denizens so well, it rattles apart, breaks down bit by bit, no longer resembles itself. Helpless in the wake of another winter coming on.

~

My father never cared for Neil Young, didn’t like his vocal delivery. But my mom heard the Déjà Vu album over and over in our house when we were teens, and she liked it.

~

Useful avoidance

Trapped inside with the air conditioner on for over a week, I sat by my bookshelves going through the poetry books in my library. I’m re-reading, assessing which books I truly want to keep because I turn to them often or learn something each time I read them, which books I keep for sentimental reasons (maybe I know the author personally), which ones to keep because they are signed copies, which ones are long out of print and I would never be able to replace them. Some of them remind me strongly of places or eras in my life: I bought this one in a small bookshop in Grand Rapids MI, or this one at Barnes & Noble when it was just one store on a NYC street corner, or these at the storied and much-mourned Gotham Book Mart or St. Mark’s Bookshop. What are good reasons to keep books when I really have to downsize? It’s not an easy task, and the first of many in the process of getting rid of stuff so my kids won’t be stuck doing it. Besides, I enjoy re-reading these books. My children are not as enthusiastic about poetry as I am, so it makes sense that someone who loves the works on the shelves be the one who makes such decisions. It feels good to be surrounded by the words of wonderful writers when the outdoors is brutally hot and humid, and every joint in my body aches.

Surrounding myself with other people’s books also acted as one more way of avoiding my own creative work. Sometimes, though, waiting around and doing nothing on a project ends up bringing clarification or new ideas. It can prove useful. I have been stalled on my in-progress manuscript, so a month or so back I asked someone to take a look at it–and then I got caught up in doing other things. Like getting cataract surgery and having covid, and then it was gardening in full swing under sweltering weather, and then the bookshelves… I wasn’t exactly procrastinating, but neither was I actively working on, or even thinking about, the collection.

Acquired when I was much younger, and cool bookshops abounded.

And one night recently–during a much-needed rainstorm–I got a brainstorm! I realized I was trying to pack too many topics into what really should be a manuscript more closely focused on how people who love one another vary in their relationships to old age and death, and on how the contemporary social and medical aspects of the aging process pull us in uncomfortable directions, often distancing us from those relationships. So yes, there should be family poems, hospice poems, biblically-influenced poems, and dealing-with-everyday observation poems. Also some poems of hope and love, poems reminding me (and readers) of the need for compassion in all dealings. But the draft had 92 poems in it, far too many; and some were there just because I like them or they’d been published in a good journal. Which are actually not good enough reasons to include a poem in a collection, according to most of the editors I know.

I am back to thinking about the manuscript and digging up potatoes–a nice crop this year–instead of culling the poetry books because, thank goodness, the heat wave’s subsided a bit. But in the process of this non-routine summer I have allowed numerous weeds to flourish and set seed; all the more work for NEXT year’s gardening, but it’s been too hot to deal with said interlopers. I like to believe the weeds and I are reaching a sort of understanding, but it is not really a compromise. All the concessions have been on my part. [Note: weeding a personal library is less physically taxing but not really any easier.]

Sweltering

I do not much care for air conditioning, and I believe it is bad for the environment; yet I admit I’m grateful for it lately, as I reside in one of the many regions of the USA that’s been enduring dangerously high temperatures for more than a week straight. I feel lucky that we’re not struggling with the heat wave–that we can shut up the windows and turn on the AC. We’re also in an earlier-than-usual drought situation though the air feels muggy and humidity has been as high as 98%.

My garden needs water every day; I generally water in the evenings because that is when the garden is in shade. The barn swallows swoop around me as I make sure the tomato and cucumber plants’ roots are getting a deep soaking. While I water, I watch for insects–fireflies, moths, dragonflies. And for bats, which have returned but aren’t as numerous as they once were. It’s pleasant for me that there are fewer mosquitoes and gnats, but I’m concerned about a drop in the number of junebugs and moths, and even (yes) mosquitoes. The heat and drought have taken a toll on all kinds of wildlife.

This morning, a pair of finches dive-bombed a squirrel that was up in the pear tree, chasing it far into the hedgerow. It may have been after the unripe pears, but squirrels also sometimes eat songbird eggs or chicks, especially when the squirrels are nursing kits or when there’s a lack of other food. The deer are so thirsty and desperate for greens that they’ve eaten every last hosta in my landscape, including the ones right up at the house foundation. They are consuming plants they have overlooked before, but I can’t blame them. Since it has been so miserable outside, I haven’t picked black raspberries this year; I’m sure the deer are happy about that. But I do wish they’d eat the poison ivy, wintercreeper, oriental bittersweet, and honeysuckle vines…that would make my landscaping tasks easier!

I’ve kept a garden journal for 30 years. If you have a garden, you don’t need to be an environmental scientist to recognize that the climate is undergoing changes. This is not a political statement but a fact. Everything right now is stressed–including the gardener! The stress enters into my consciousness and, I suppose, into my creative life. My poem drafts of the past week have been a bit on the bleak side.

Here’s a draft of one of the 7-line poems I was working on last week. Suits the weather, I guess.

~


Sweltering

A description accurate for the days past solstice
when even the wind lies sweating in a hammock
unable to rise for a brief turn around the block.
Blackbirds slow their trills, robins shelter in shade,
all the tasks we should tend to we leave undone.
Hours of lethargy seep into skin and set up house,
keeping us damp, achy, sunburned with the blues.

~