August 2023
Author's Note: These poems are concerned with aging, something I think most of us of a certain age consider and more (and if you aren’t there yet, you will be). “Afterwards” is a villanelle, which seems the perfect form for age’s restrictions; and the second poem, in couplets, is a description of how I slowly had to give up something I truly loved, gardening because the toll on the body became too much, especially on the back. Long gone are the days that inspired my first book, Vegetables and Other Relationships.
Afterwards
The body creates its own confinement
with each small stroke. Another small part
locked down, the key dissolved and absent.
The tongue gets stuck, unable to comment.
One side won’t rouse like its counterpart.
The body wallows in its own confinement.
Raising an arm is like lifting cement.
Fingers can’t grasp. The throat makes a start,
but locks down its words, dissolved and absent.
The spine won’t bend, despite the intent.
Who knew that balance could be such an art?
The body discovers its own confinement.
The simple act of swallowing is torment,
a thing once thoughtlessly done by heart
now blocked. All keys, dissolved, absent.
What crime fits such cruel punishment?
What flimsy subsistence is left to chart?
The body offers its own confinement,
locked down, its key dissolved and absent.
Decades of Vegetable Gardening
I built raised beds with timbers and railroad ties.
Dug through rock and caliche in the Texas heat.
Tilled and aerated hardened ground till it became soil.
Sowed seeds, planted sprigs, buried fragile roots.
Caged tomatoes, supported beans, mulched everything.
Watered each morning, each evening. Weeded, waited.
Watched peppers, asparagus, beets rise and flourish.
(Gave up on bug-infested broccoli and cauliflower.)
Harvested and harvested. Bowls and colanders full.
Prepared salads, salsas, sauces. Steamed and grilled.
Froze bag after bag of beans for winter eating.
Gave away mounds of squash, piles of peppers.
Through four houses, I repeated the procedure.
It wasn’t the work that broke me: it was my back.
By the fifth house, I knew gardening was in my past.
Couldn’t kneel, couldn’t bend, couldn’t get back up.
The body had reached its limit, learned to say no.
Nothing better than home-grown, fresh-picked tomatoes.
A fragrance that invites eating out of hand.
Now bittersweet, a reminder of what’s left behind.
©2023 Scott Wiggerman
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