The Home Gardner

Liz Southwood, 8/10/01

//the home gardner

The Home Gardener
by Elizabeth Southwood

Gray white-edged clouds
blow through the sky,
seemingly swept along
by dancing switches
of white blossoms:
quaint hearth brooms made from
our ancient plum, its pale green lichen
crusting its soft-gray limbs.
I hold on to the tree,
cautious from tripping
on gopher excavations.

I watch you down the years
tending the yard: mowing,
weeding, raking, pruning.
Now It smells of new blooms:
roses, nasturtiums,
honey locust, Scotch broom.

Bright-blue stellar jays caw
in the oak. A neighbor’s
black and white cat startles at their squawks,
then rolls around in your freshly-weeded
rose-garden dirt as if it were catnip.

You stretch as you stand up,
and smile, satisfied with
the piles of weeds destined
for the compost, “found”