Galloping down the homestretch, I look to what is around me as I grapple with keeping up with my 100 poems in 100 days target. I almost did 3 haiku today, but that felt too much like cheating (although I have been known to do nothing but sketches for a week during Art Every Day Month, and then go back and color them in and that counts for another week). Whatever it takes….It’s June, the garden is glorious and I need context, so garden it is for the goal.
77
Today the sidewalk is supposed to sizzle. This morning I walk the gardens, hose in hand, giving everything a drink to sustain during the high heat hours. I suppose if I were a sunflower properly watered this day would be a favorite. Turning my face east in anticipation of the rise of day, I would open, follow the arc across the sky, wind up facing west bidding goodbye to that bright orb I track whether or not it shows itself, glory in the pastels of purple and pink and grape as it takes its nightly leave. But I’m not, and first light is as m
uch as I can muster before the intense escalation of temperature, slipping quicklyinside, sipping chilled chi lattes in the cool of my air conditioned home.
78 – Haiku
No breeze, sun rides high,
hot blazing in a blue sky.
Flowers grow deep roots.
79
June in the sun garden: bright pink, hot orange, mustard yellow, blaze white zinnias compete with nasturtiums and cone flowers for most vibrant show. Basil grows an inch each night but sage grows six. Sweet peas are finding their way up the trellis slowly in the shadow of leafed out hollyhocks and the sunflowers tower over my head seven feet or more, tracing the sun’s movement even while still closed, blindly following a pattern built into the thick memory of their seed’s DNA. The wind sculpture captures the breeze, twists, goes round and round with little urging, and under it an unnamed vine twines itself up an empty flower-hanging pole, smothers a red glass dragon and metal bell in green leaves and tiny flowers that haven’t yet opened. The columbines spent, spread black seeds from dried husks, while the blue Love in the Mist produce prodigious pods, a complete second act after flowering. In the planter, fancy sweet potato vines begin their slow drop over the sides, a waterfall of chartreuse and rust. Everything is exuberance – except me. Even well-watered I wilt, long for the high forest, deep shadows and the splash of frogs in a bean shaped pond with one goldfish. Instead, I sit inside, sip chilled wine, golden and caramel scented, write poems and says blessings for the conditioning of air.
1 Comment
I love how you have captured the summer heat and the sunflower’s adoration of the blazing sun. I, too, am grateful for the air conditioning and wilt in the heat. 🙂