27 Garden poems

for Philip Hobsbaum Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

The midnight streetlight illuminating the white of clover assures me I am right not to manicure my patch of grass into a dull carpet of uniform green, but to allow whatever will to take over. Somewhere in that lace lies luck, though I may never swoop down to find it. Three, too, is an auspicious number. And this seeing a reminder to avoid too much taming of what, even here, wants to be wild.

I grew tomatoes for thirty years she did the flowers it was our agreement now i grow both the tomatoes are fine the flowers are a mess but they're mine and she'd have something to say about them

i compost everything coffee grounds and eggshells the wilted lettuce i meant to eat last tuesday it all becomes soil which becomes tomatoes which become dinner this is the best loop i know

Sunday morning with my hands in the soil the church bells are going somewhere down the street i have my own service out here

planting time in april seeds in rows dirt under my fingernails which never fully comes out i've stopped minding

Nothing much in march but i go out anyway and check the corners where things come back from they come back they always come back i forget this every winter