Bountiful garden,
you weren’t meant to be kept,
your winter wheat too wild to be tamed,
logistics just weren’t there in the end.
I didn’t need your clustering bounty anyway.

I’m as strong as 500 elephants without you,
can carry the world’s pain on my back.
I’m a limestone mountain, steep,
slaked with gold roots digging me deep,
steadfast against any mountain removal
though my legs, and voice, and eyes shake,
and feet tremble as I leap over broken forests,
trunks timbering without sound, swelling heart,
rivers winding unwavering in my blood stream.

So, take your petulant tomatoes, basil,
tender zucchinis, summer squash, and corn
somewhere else for fall farming,
I’ll stay here and continue to thrive well,
on my own.

  June 27, 2016