War in the air
Love in the soil
The patience of water
The seeds of hope
And an understanding sun
The gardener knows well that
Peace grows slowly
But is flowers smell wonderful
Fruits so tasty
Determination...
To feed the children with juicy fruits...

"Make the air fresh again!"

Love is a transforming plant.

you can water it just enough and give it warmth and sunshine,
so it can grow and flourish and give fruits.

you can water it too much or give it too much heat and it will suffocate.

you can water it too little and it will grow spikes.

you can give it too little sunshine and it will grow into a ****.

or you can just hate gardening and live without it.

Greenhouse
Scaling flowers
A buzzing for pollen
Pinks and magentas stroke the space
Growing

i can still smell
the fertile soil
beneath my nails.

breathe deep.

inhale the heavy crush
of nature, fragrant
and somber on a frigid
Florida morning.

pulling past-due produce
from the earth
only to cut it up
and return the harvest
once more to the ground
as compost.

i nicked my finger
on a pair of scissors
dicing mustard greens.
i laughed. i’d never
noticed just how red
blood was. today,
juxtaposed
with the Planet’s brown flesh,
i marveled at my own fragility.

for the first time
in what feels like forever
i didn’t ruin
what i touched.

A scurry of munks
Are eating my garden;
To you they're cute,
But my heart's hardened.
They chirp at the trough
Of my labored crop;
Like double-dippers
They pouch and they run,
They sound like they're laughing,
Like they're having some fun.
I curse and complain,
But the munks keep returning,
Like a recurring refrain
Of free loaders and hoarders.
Should I feel such disdain?
After some thought,
We're much the same.

Take away the 
Disease in these branches;
The tares from 
This fertile ground.
Remove the stones
From this heart and 
Plow the earth
Until I am nothing 
But pure, organic soil
Ready for your
Be-fruitful-and-multiply
Seeds.

I found my mother outside in our shed
holding her trowel in May.
We walked to the farmers market
and she told me where vegetables come from.
The morning was spent planting seeds and bulbs
close to her heart, my future siblings.

Mother taught me the painstaking birth
of cabbage and watermelon.
We were impatient in the kitchen
while we stirred soup and noodles,
peaking out the kitchen window.

I started planting trees for distraction.
Mom told me
I would hammock under them in time,  
shade my forehead in leafy kisses,
turn my novel pages with soft breeze.

Father watered the tomatoes to relieve
mother from the neck-breaking June sunlight.
She watched through the doorway.
Each night, with baby monitors wired through
cracked windows, Mom waited to pick
her devotions from stem until they were ready.

In August I saw my grandma smile
in crow’s feet happiness
at life that she held in cupped palms,
covered in placenta dirt.