Some pour their verse
From Water Cans.²
Scanning verse teaches you
To scan the Crops.³
I part Earth’s folds with
A searching finger & Yield—⁴
I have begun to Plant thee, and will
Labour to make thee full of Growing—⁵
I put my hands into the Ground—
And they take Root and
Grow into a season’s Harvest!⁶
May I a small house
And a Large Garden have:⁷
A simple garden—with Acres of Sky!⁸
Without Plants I cannot grow—
Without Flowers I do not open.⁹
Who loves a Garden finds
Within their Soul life’s whole!¹⁰
¹ Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
² Vladimir Mayakovsky tr. George Reavey, At the Top of My Voice
³ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁴ Audre Lorde, A Woman/Dirge for Wasted Children
⁵ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
⁶ Wendell Berry, Song in a Year of Catastrophe
⁷ Abraham Cowley, The Wish
⁸ Cat Stevens, Into White
⁹ Mary Ruefle, Poem in Which I Explain Myself
¹⁰ Louise Seymour Jones, Who Loves a Garden