Every weekday, members of the Rosen, Powers, and Cole families may post haikus or other comments describing where they are or what they are thinking about that day.
I recently wrote a longer poem about the garden center:
At the Garden Center
Wooden tables, sun-washed end to end, cast shadows in the narrow gravel rows marked for achillea and amaranth, amsonia, asclepias. They blend
those rootstocks raised in buffered soil and cultivated in protected beds, potted and pinched and snipped and bound until they bear the fruit of human toil.
The shoppers come in floppy hats and clogs, pushing their carts across the coils of hose. They gasp and giggle at unfurling flowers like pet store patrons choosing puppy dogs.
At table top, the manners never lapse. The plants stand straight and learn to hold their tongues. They turn their faces slowly toward the sun and sit with hands held folded in their laps.
The staff routinely checks the etiquette of every rootling, every potted palm, and slaps across the knuckles those that fail to follow rules, act out, or just forget
their place. Such plants, no matter how they beg, are moved beneath the table to the dark, where they stretch their crooked fingers toward the light or scrape a thorn across some passing leg.
I recently wrote a longer poem about the garden center:
ReplyDeleteAt the Garden Center
Wooden tables, sun-washed end to end,
cast shadows in the narrow gravel rows
marked for achillea and amaranth,
amsonia, asclepias. They blend
those rootstocks raised in buffered soil
and cultivated in protected beds,
potted and pinched and snipped and bound until
they bear the fruit of human toil.
The shoppers come in floppy hats and clogs,
pushing their carts across the coils of hose.
They gasp and giggle at unfurling flowers
like pet store patrons choosing puppy dogs.
At table top, the manners never lapse.
The plants stand straight and learn to hold their tongues.
They turn their faces slowly toward the sun
and sit with hands held folded in their laps.
The staff routinely checks the etiquette
of every rootling, every potted palm,
and slaps across the knuckles those that fail
to follow rules, act out, or just forget
their place. Such plants, no matter how they beg,
are moved beneath the table to the dark, where
they stretch their crooked fingers toward the light
or scrape a thorn across some passing leg.
September 2008