Victory Garden


Here I go again as ever moping on Things 
That Vanish alas this time for no reason whatever  
those wheels of cheese under clear glass domes 
displayed on the counters of general stores all vanishing too
it doesn’t take much to start me I’m driving back 
from our own town’s uncheesed store with the paper 

and its freight of awful news from everywhere on earth
and I wonder just how long that earth can survive 
but I’m moping too that my wife came home  
today with a desk that once belonged to her vanished grandma 
and looks to be as heavy as fifteen anvils 
and it’s 90 sopping degrees outside

the globe burning up and I’ll be sweating lugging that load 
my hands both useless against the deerflies’ blitz 
which will get me down too and we don’t have room
anyhow for this monster  I’m 70  I need to be getting 
rid of things not taking them on and this morning 
I picked what seemed a hundred ticks 

from our dogs   we never had ticks here not until lately but now 
I pass Polly our lovely old neighbor a bonnet her shield
against those ticks and flies unmindful 
of any such nuisance as she weeds her garden and she looks up  
all proud of her work you can tell and kneeling waves 
and offers me a friendly smile 

as if someone had told her Say cheese and as if in spite of headlines 
like the one I saw at the store when I glanced at the paper  
Husband Runs Over Wife With Tractor
while her funny and ornery husband Tink in spite of lumbago
stands some yards behind her in their shed to sand 
a mammoth sideboard so lost in his labor 

he doesn’t see me not that he needs to