(Feel free to suggest a title for this poem. I have tried several but none have stuck.)
Gray thunderheads pull the view into sharp focus
the still calm of humidity laden lindens and oaks
green grass turned blue as the thunder plays overhead.
In childhood when the world was awe inspiring
on summer days sticky with mosquitos and lightening bugs,
my mom would tell of God above tending his garden
that the thunder was him turning over his wheelbarrow
and all the potatoes he had in there would roll out.
On the farm running the harvested corn fields, chasing barn cats,
watching the snapping turtles temporarily housed in the old
bathtub turned cow watering trough; there was never a question
that God was a gardener and we his flowers tended.
I could look up at the fields of storm clouds
and watch those potatoes turn
to raindrops to blanket my nose, as I ran for shelter
in the kitchen warmed with baking banana bread.
Today, as a grown girl, thinking of you and me and this mess,
as the thunder rocks the house, shaking my
sense of wellbeing, I wonder what must become of the weeds.
tamingthemilemonster 