Late Garden
Late Garden
1.
On Easter we made
love though
you were bleeding
and after you showed me
how to plant flowers
in the hollows
of trees—
watched me claw
black silt
from the just-thawed
riverside
to scoop into the bowl
of a fallen fir—
loosely, you said
so rain
can trickle through
and make the new
shoots ache.
2.
Rows of sweet corn whisper
around a house
like the one you were born in—
clapboards dusted
with pollen, pathways
winding like tributaries
toward the steeple a few miles off.
I am pissing downwind
carefully. Bon Jovi
blares from your idling car.
We drive off, sweet scent
of corn in our skin,
our rumor
on the lips of leaves.
3.
In your hoop house
we spread ash and fold out
the terrycloth
to keep the new seeds warm—
weight the corners
with bricks, brush
slow spiders
away as the dusk wind
draws over the field.
My finger shivers
on sudden softness,
cotton nests
on a cool brick’s underside—
three clusters of eggs,
one burst
with bright bodies
small as lacquered dust—
dispersing,
a just born star.
4.
Sometimes the sun slows
down
everything. I lower
my lids
to feel it, hot
heavy
on skin.
I open. You laugh
and distant lindens
leap
like fish in the wind.