Delight in Dirt
"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate." ~ Mary Oliver, "Don't Hesitate"
I rip away foxtails, shepherd’s tail, spurge,
dead-head lilies to reveal sprouting cosmos,
fold ranunculus corms into crumbly soil.
Gardening makes my heart leap.
I share dad’s farmer genes,
the need to nourish bare earth,
coax yellow trumpet blooms from buried daffodil bulbs,
propagate roses, rhododendrons, hibiscus.
Delight burgeons when transplanting
orange autumn chrysanthemums,
white winter cyclamen,
pink snapdragons in spring,
red summer zinnia.
My spirit blossoms
as gloved hands pluck out nettles,
tuck rich organic mulch
around azaleas, geraniums,
divide bearded iris.
While neighbors apply herbicides, rock salt,
eradicate all vegetation,
I pour sweat, blisters, love into my small plot,
invoke green life, make naked dirt flower.
First Iris
Hyacinths, tender gold daffodils
founder under weight of rain,
bury muddy faces,
their spring show finished,
as brick planter fills, overflows.
Bracketed by bomb cyclone torrents,
a tenacious bearded iris
evades foraging blackbirds,
thrusts blanched flower bud
toward watery sunrise.
Silky white bloom unfolds
powder blue-edged petals,
raises regal green scepter
among diamond sprinkled
pink climber roses.
Jennifer Lagier lives a block from the stage where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar during the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, helps coordinate Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Recent publications: Rising Voices: Poems Toward a Social Justice Revolution, Fog and Light: San Francisco Through the Poets Who Live There, Second Wind: Words & Art of Hope & Resilience. She has published nineteen books, most recently: Meditations on Seascapes and Cypress (Blue Light Press) and Camille Chronicles (FutureCycle Press). Forthcoming: Weeping in the Promised Land (Kelsay Books).