Garden Variety News

North winds blew the paper news
Out from under crookneck squash.
Words weighed down by yellow straw
Flopped upon the sprouts of beans
Who bowed and almost snapped.

We’d laid it down for water’s sake,
To suffocate the weeds, but compost
And blue thunderstorms didn’t bother
To read about the captured soldier
Who’d faced the desert as if he were free.

2014