The Year June Stole August While You Were Away

It is easy to sit in the garden when June has done
its work. When you’ve been parallel to the rain
and the sun has not worked harder than you have.
Sitting like this, tomatoes grow early above your head.
Yarrow’s umbrels do not worry you, or the small puppy
beyond the short fence, whining for you and fresh dirt.
Light pictures inside your eyes blossom like blood.
You look at your own looking. Send peace into the garden.
It sends peace into you like air roots, like stars of lilac water.
You are sure life is a garden rewarding your hard work.

But today you see what little rain and too much sun have done.
What your perpendicular absence in the garden has wrought.
Sit below brown umbrels and rusted fronds burnt on flagstone.
Rearrange grass mulch over holes dug by the dog who leaps
like a deer when you are gone. This year, too often.
Water with a new nozzle, marvel at its rainy volume, at time.
Leaves beyond repair. Pick them. Stunned tomatoes. Pull.
Where you pruned death last week, new shoots. Look deep.
Impossible spring green in a convalescing July. Old pictures swell.
Sit still and bloom in the weary (nearly) now of it, not the why.

2012