The Ghost Who Works in the Garden

Fear not! 
Gray clouds will part, the freezing piss
of dripping March dry up
Spring will be a sprig in your hat 
You will grovel with your fanny in the air
your fingers sunk in the cold clods up to the first knuckle
assembling life on the installment plan,
taking attendance, muttering over the casualty list,
feeling for the life that is no more.

Whose beggared body shuffles out,
drawers at the ankles, gloves rotting on his hands,
bearing fading recollections of the primal design?
The ghost of the laughing amateur
who laid out this colossus,
wrestled with angels, stole quickening fire
from the slumbering gods,
squandered it on early primrose, sunshine pansies, 
spotted toad lilies in October,
now cries mercy at a single tricksy crick
in a tired back, a halting knee,
and looks for a shady seat 
beside the truant foxgloves, that shy biennial,
where he can lift a glass 
of tired blood and drink a toast 
to the healing weeds.

Promises of Perfection: 3.31.16


Everything is beautiful now 
Everything lives in the mind 
The columbine is perfect, its many floppy-eared  faces
offered up like handfuls of itself 
Another winter's frozen earth submerged beneath its roots
like a ghoulish dream
All that matters now is time
Nothing I do or fail to do can touch it
Flowers will come in the time prescribed,
mellow days of May
Scalloped blooms, bright and short-lived 
as a moon for lovers
A perennial plant is a flight plan written in stone 
eminently more perfectible than any work of man
Good for a happy week or two, maybe a month
Nothing that lasts much longer can be so pure

Visiting Roses: Under the 'Lune' *
   

Visiting roses
You always 
Give a Little Blood 

Approach with caution
Clipper sharp 
Beauty Yields, but Keeps
    
A Thorny Sting
Think of June 
Bow to summer's king

Approach undaunted 
Bitter truth
A Rose is but a 

Little Crowned Thing 
Pluck her once 
Hear a Garden Sing 

(*A "lune" consists of three lines with a syllable count of 5-3-5)

A Family Garden* 


The father is the sturdy oak
What you see is what you get 
Strong and straight from year to year 
Drink some coffee, have a smoke

Mother works the flower beds
Iris, primrose, lily-white in valley-green
Win some, lose some, bleeding heart 
A homebound love, a family scene

The first fruit shoots in early spring 
Beanpole, creeper, a climbing thing 
In shady glens by an ivied wall 
Drinks deep, or not, from the Pierian spring

Behold the fruit of steady growth
The grasses spread, home on the range
The handy bird avoids the brush 
Plant strong foundations, times will change

At last a joy like coral bells 
Sweet sister blooms like ocean swells
Enduring growth on affection's vine
Love roots, and nurture fruit divine 

(*Note: written from a National Poetry Month prompt to write a poem in the form of a family portrait.)