POETRY
Writers’ Garden
For Zivah Avraham and all us fellow cross-pollinators
The kitchen has its garden
where sage, rosemary, thyme, and mint
hang out over juleps in the sun.
Fragrant lavender pretends to be useful
and basil hogs the water fountain
while chive rolls eyes
and throws out another posh edible blossom.
The library has a garden too
where the writers grow
in yellow lamplight
fertilized with coffee grounds
and Pulitzer dreams.
They flower, dreamers, all, and sages too:
an unfurling vulnerable and trembling,
having stumbled against a block
where they now wait, one by one, hopeful
for some pollinating whisper
to ride in on the wind or maybe
drift from another page.
Who will tend their fertile soil
with trowels full of words?
What visitor will drop,
absent-minded, a seed
from a holey, yellow-dusted pocket?
What flower will turn,
with the sun, to another?
