Planting a garden is revolution—
hope triumphs over despair. Flower 
or veggie—all green comes from a smoothie 
of crushed rock and humus—spiked with 
nitrogen, phosphorous, and micronutrients.

Even seed anatomy amuses—the coat
that keeps all dry and warm, cotyledon,
the battery for growth, hypocotyl 
and plumule--stem and shoot, and last
the embryonic root, the radicle, 
linking us to the first revolution. 

Seeds are small packages of optimism. 
Decisions that light and warmth will prevail
and jonquils or turnips, lilies or peppers 
will rise, one or both. There is hope in 
nourishing life besides our own—belief that 
a better day will come, spring will birth
summer and then even fall. That hope can 
be grown just as easily as lost.
                        

The thickened air was cold as 
permafrost as we picked through
87 years of accumulation,
sentimental trilobites wrapped in
the papery shale of lived years.

In a far corner, under an eave,
sat a tackle box, metallic green
mottled with rust, the colors of 
duckweed trapped in the corner of
a pond full of brim. 
 
Opened, the layered trays creaked--joints 
almost as frozen as Grandpa’s 
aged knees. The box was a small 
galaxy of rusted hooks, bobbers, 
plugs and needle nose pliers. 

The tangle brought back his hours of
help with my middle school science 
project, a model cell--Golgi bodies, 
mitochondria, and the sticky 
sounding endoplasmic reticulum.

An embalmed night crawler lays across
both a red-headed bass plug and a
leopard frog endowed with two trebles,
 somehow having escaped our old tin 
worm can. It crumbled at my touch.

My earliest memory, us walking back 
from Uncle Jake’s pond. I didn’t
even reach four feet and he remarked 
“The stringer’s heavy, let me carry it.
We had a good day, didn’t we?”
                        

Standing by my Volvo wagon, 
jeans still shedding the fifty-two
degree river that stole my warmth— 

rod in right hand, gutted rainbow 
trout in left, she approached—face brewing 
dismay. Burnished copper hair 

and skin white as sea foam. Twenty-two, 
maybe. River at my back, campground
ahead I had noticed her waving 

a cell, freckled arm extended 
as she stood on the door ledge 
of her red Toyota Solara 

straining to capture a signal wisp.
I suppose the tee was an accent,
accessory for hair and skin.

But why the stress carving her face?
She drew close and said “I left my
cash at home and want to camp for

three nights. They don’t take cards, and
I can’t reach my Mom.” Forest Service
intolerance of both plastic 

and scofflaws, is well known, so I
asked “how much do you need?” Clearly
I appraised as “a Dad, no threat”, 

dashing my lingering self-
image—an acronym ending 
in ILF. I mean, who else 

but a Dad has cash “just in case?” 
Her eyes dropped to the pine needles
carpeting the ground, while answering

“thirty dollars, I’ll Venmo you.” 
I handed her three tens, a 
business card, and thought 

“mirrors really don’t lie.”