Summer Notes: 4 – Water

These awkward weedy notes of summer, they steal
water from the subtle artful crafty ones, the ones
crammed with food and hose drenched, and yes,
fruit-bearing they’ll be, and well spent.

The mollycoddle promises a bumper crop this year,
but what will be done with it all?

They can can the coddle, bottle the molly,
boil the gruel for ballet to improve posture,
post this and that here and there without
regard for the rules of a bygone garden.

The cooing of pigeons so quiet,
the stained glass raw golds
color the little nook with amber light.

No words in nature to suffer these weeds,
still birds align in lines that make sense,
the washerwoman counting syllables
come morning the clothes inside out.

And the slug slowing has something to say,
heading under the clinker cool brick.

These appellations June dropped,
in the day squirrels gnaw them,
at night possums come and grab,
and raccoons, and very early
in the morning, just before sunup
now, the coyotes looking for cats up.

Give us the weeds our daily words,
and forgive us our arrears,
for we are hard on hearing,
and we don’t really need
words, anyway.

We might want words, why,
I’m not sure, but we need
water, weeds and all, and you,
you have all the words,
more than you need.