for Beth

When I rolled up to the curb
and rolled down the window,
raindrops dripped inside.

She walked along the sidewalk,
clearly unfazed by the rain.
I called out to her to offer a ride

home, meaning back to her place,
but secretly wishing she’d take
me as asking for something more,

like her pledge to live life
by my side, with or without rain
glazing the faded red Suburban.
                        

	
He plotted a small garden in the backyard,
measured streams of sunlight through pecan
and elm trees, adjusted the plot three feet,
and began to turn dirt, to prepare the earth.

The ground, baked to concrete, resisted.
He broke two shovels before turning to a pick

axe, gouging holes deep to loosen rock-
hard soil. He added peat, topsoil, manure,
churned and stirred, remade this dry land,
encouraged it to become fertile.

He sowed corn, tomatoes, zucchini,
squash, pumpkins, and watermelons.

He watered the mounds and rows,
watched sprouts spring up, culled and thinned
plants, watered throughout the drought.
Vines crawled, stalks climbed skyward.

Then came fire ants, slugs, snails, beetles,
aphids, thrips, mites, and no rain.

Water bills spiked. Plants struggled anyway.
He nursed blooms until they bore fruit,
coaxed corn, cucumbers, beans to mature.
The heatwave came before the harvest,

felled it all except the zucchini, which thrived,
grew monstrous. For months variety meant

fried, sautéed, or baked. For a treat he made 
loaves of zucchini bread or muffins.
Come Christmas, all he really 
wanted was an empty freezer.
                        

	After "The D.H. Lawrence Tree" (1929), Georgia O’Keefe

He studies a pine in his backyard, limbs posed
for a photo, stretching out to touch stars at dusk.
He can see the curls of branches, twisted by time,
wind, who knows, maybe volition, an urge to curve
into the space of the painter’s eye and onto canvas,
to achieve this mastery, even if it hints at the void
above, beyond, below the majesty of a tree,
whose limbs become roots in the sky, 
whose canopy of needles blend into blackness,
a precursor of Peter Gabriel’s downside up,
a topsy-turvy-worldwide-wonder which,
for a moment, pulls you out of your place,
lets you see your own rootedness to the universe,
before you admit how small you really are.