In The Garden

Picking Beans

Backed up against the sweet peas

drooping over the path, beside

the two onions from last year

now gone to starry white-globed seed

and swirling with bumble bees;

overrun by a volunteer tomato

whose rambling vines I cannot

bring myself to yank up —

In line beside the green feathers

carrots wave in the air,

and the tang of dill

announcing its place where it wants

and not where I want —

And then the few square feet

given over to the cosmos

whose pink petals each year

offer new paint-strokes

of cross-pollination —

I squat in not-enough room between rows

and pluck the slim pods

hidden beneath their own leafed canopy.

The garden belongs to them —

the beans and dill, the cucumber and onions.

I am their lucky caretaker, their human

who offers water each evening,

reaps their generosity in silver bowls.

Thanks them 
for the honor of tending.

  ©T. Clear