Mattie's Pillow

Busy days in the garden and greenhouse.  After days of rain clouds, we have blue sky again.  The horses are so bored by rainy weather, they have chewed a post on the pass-through between them nearly through.  At night I hear Mattie chewing at it, rattling the metal fence attached to in in a rhythmic clanging.  Sam eggs her on.

Now it’s back to the garden and back to riding.

Here’s a poem from a few weeks ago:

——-

Visiting Sue Dean’s Garden

Irony is a rock garden:

light filters through petals,

the sky-colored poppy,

the deep pink fireweed,

a rose, an iris, the extravagant

plumes of fern—all glow

in June sun, against the cool

chocolate planes of quarried

rock. You point

here and there, to small plants

growing, tiny flecks of yellow,

or white, or pale blue flowers,

name them and the ones

who gave them to you.

Among them, a pond

that rocks outline lies still.

An insect floats there; algae

spreads. The plants sprawl out:

years of re-blooming, covering

the rough edges of rock.

You dream as you walk,

and speak of dreams.

We could sit here all day,

listening to the hum and buzz

of insects exploring sweet

caves, flowers, letting sun

fall on our arms as we bend

to pull out what we don’t

desire, tuck what we do

into dirt.

We slice fruit, nibble cheese,

turn compost, hope

for more and more to bloom

to rise from what hard things

rocks are, what nourishes

from decay.

Tags: Alaska, garden, horses, poetry, summer

This entry was posted on June 30, 2009 at 5:42 pm and is filed under View from Mattie's Pillow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.