My amaryllis died,
blooming once and then outgrowing its pot, cracking even plastic and pouring
soil on the floor, but resurrection lilies rise like ropes dancing for a magic
flute.
She sees only flash cuts
of August one more bean harvest from a browning raised bed, rotating crops
behind warped wood and a panting dog that looks almost as old as you.
Not much happens in eight
seconds, the time it takes to answer a phone, long enough only for almost three
jars of Nutella to sell or a rider and his bull to win.
Milkweed bugs found my
milkweed this year, orange and black like chocolate layered candy corn
preparing pods for a promised winter under snow.
Nearly three score old,
she wonders if she’s like Tom Cruise or Wilfred Brimley, playing younger or
older than her years, and then she stuffs three sticks of gum in her mouth and
smiles.
Tearing off corn husks on
the back stoop felt like birthdays in July, grandpa’s wrapped gifts from J.C.
Penney, leaving silken ribbons and paper balls so light they nearly floated in
the breeze.
Paper bags flatten nicely
into place mats for green bean stems, piling up with a snap and a slight pop of
air and that last drop of water left from yesterday’s rain.
Ground cherries disappear
into their husks when they over-ripen, no soggy fermenting pulp or bare seed,
just a tan skin thin and strong, empty but too firm to tear.
I tried growing snow peas
planting them too late for a fall harvest to flower and vine only inches before
they shriveled like the skin on my left hand, brown, dry, and spotted with age.
I threw a praying mantis
into a pumpkin patch today, hoping to spare a monarch caterpillar from its
snout. Once within reach, mantises strike rapidly to grasp the prey with their
spiked raptorial forelegs and snap.
After digging ground
cherries out of an overgrown tomato patch my face yellows spreading pollen
briefly in the pepper bed before a mirror tells me “please clean!”
