The Unkempt Garden

To find love
you must stumble many times
through its unkempt garden,
until roses growing wild along a fence
unfold and offer themselves to the wind.

Tear at the flowers with your teeth.
Let the sharp-tongued thorns
fill your mouth with kisses.
And petals, thick as rain, will slide
their offerings into you.

from Noticing Eden

Haiku Garden

Here in the garden
Where we move like amazed birds
Poems grow everywhere


Marbleized green globes
Of watermelon spinning
Against the dark earth


Satellites of seeds
And pink flesh fill our dry mouths
With sweet warm water


Herbs in the corner
Sage, oregano, and thyme
Mint flooding the air


Fingers of lime green
Cucumber poke through curled leaves
Like bashful children


Crawling up the fence
All day the moon flowers hide
Petals from the sun


Pointed pods of green
Okra stiffen their fingers
In the summer sun


Here and there, squash vines
Filling with sunlight, explode
In yellow blossoms

from Noticing Eden

Spaghetti

Aunt Barbara was a beauty queen. Competing in the Miss America Pageant

and riding on top of floats in holiday parades in South Paris Maine

did nothing to prepare her for being a wife. When she was first married

to Uncle Buddy she knew how to boil water and cook spaghetti,

but the sauce was simply too much for her. So, she mixed catsup

into a little hot water left at the bottom of the pot,

poured it over the pasta, tossed in a lot of Kraft Parmesan Cheese

and served it almost every night. Uncle Buddy ate bowlfuls

of the stuff for months and told her it was delicious.

When my grandfather told me this story, he said

it's the kind of thing that happens when you really fall in love.

It was a summer evening. He was sitting in the Adirondack

chair behind the driveway in front of the railroad tracks

that ran through the yard behind my grandparent's house.

He smoked his pipe and talked while I pulled rhubarb from the garden.

We were waiting for Uncle Buddy and Aunt Barbara

to come in for the weekend, with my teenage cousins

who had long straight black hair and jeans so tight they had to lie down

on the bed to zip them up. On Saturday night, they played 45s

out in the shed and danced with the local boys.

And if we hadn't bothered them too much during the day,

the would let me and my cousins watch them through the window

and dance to Elvis and the Beatles out on the grass;

my grandparents sitting back in their chairs watching us,

tapping their feet and clapping until the train roared through town.


unpublished