May 2021
Bio Note: “Recipe for a Curbside Strip” is an account of my efforts to keep a flower garden growing in a
city. Every spring is a re-creation. The other two are responses to Covid Time. In the twilight era of newspaper journalism,
I still write one story a week for The Boston Globe, and I’m hoping to see a couple of works of fiction published this year.
Recipe for a Curbside Strip
Rip up fourteen years of tending,
an inexpensive patchwork of late-starting perennials,
‘Autumn Joy’ sedum (love these names),
Self-seeding annuals,
Hanger-on pansies, those paradoxical survivors of frosty New England springs,
annual rotations of a familiar roster of self-seeding heat-loving natives
Persistent weeds, and oddly disappearing violets,
plus hardy mums proving their staying power
All these sacrificed so that street and sidewalks can be rebuilt
to machine expectations
Begin again in Thanksgiving cold,
planting scores of daffodil starters,
those fat spuds of sunny potential,
in the city's gift of much-pebbled soil
Wait five months for the bloom,
add wild violets transferred by hand from
the fertile, weed-addicting earth of the perennial patches out back,
plus other nameless wildthings, weeds
and a prominent invasive left to its own greedy device
Chip in some new Covid-priced annuals
(everything pretty much double this year)
Then out back again to hunt up more ground-hugging violets to fill
a few shyly embarrassed bare spots
like children with too much flesh
for last year's clothing
Add rain,
repeated squattings,
subsequent lower back complaints,
two weeks of subnormal chill
plus a summer-surprise! May weekend
And there you have it:
One floral sidewalk strip,
restored to the homeowner's
…temporary…
satisfaction
Of Course the Poet Wears a Mask
Everybody wears a mask
the fender polisher wears a mask
the metallurgist
the surgeon in his lair
to guard against the spatter
The actor with his shrewd demeanor
to take us into his confidence
while he wreaks some horrible revenge
upon the plump patron in the third row
The loan arranger with his company face
the patched fool
with the heavy make-up
the heisters wielding rackets woven
from the blood of the ram
My father wore a mask
My teacher
blood dripping from a recent tear
in the fabric of his time-space continuum
Who am I today?
the player asks
the politician with his broken staff
the weeping child
the disappointed lover
the confident despoiler
the rigger
the triggerman
the cloth itself
wound about
his ruined body
Accidental Collaborators
The door was shut,
but not locked
I wanted in. I kicked up a fuss
She turned to me, a look of distant rainbows
in her eyes
Kiss me, I said, you fool
Who writes these equations with so many eXes
left to be discovered?
A squib on social media
closing the untraceable feedback loop
Everywhere fresh promptings
The weird, chuckety-chachety patter from the twilight horizon
sounding like Woody the cosmically lonely Would-pecker
Nailing up posters
on a nippy Good Saturday Eve
The squibbed 411(or maybe 911) requests on
the digital bulletin boards
seeking new ways to get ‘my guy’ in motion
To do what we must all in the end almighty do
Promptingly, promptly,
what form of anonymous collaboration
rises from the faceless voices calling out
for inspiration
Why do they intrigue me,
but only intermittently,
unlike the voice of the distraught
Who-what-where? woodpecker
nailing up posters
on eternity
Originally published in publication
©2021 Robert Knox
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