Saturday, October 24, 2015

Beans \ Last Planting

Nancy:  Fresh peas for the evening meal, dry beans for soup, or next year’s garden, child or woman, a part of life’s story



Beans


some things never change, bean pods
the brown stiff curl of them
the beans, shining, speckled or
red or black or sometimes porcelain white
the way the thumb runs down the pod
beans sliding free
year after year, dry pods
shining beans, the wealth of them
beans are eternal
only the thumbs change
the hands, white skin, five year old hands
turn brown, speckled, stiff as dry pods
curled, bent, eighty years of knowing
the shining beans, the thumbs
sliding beans falling
the pan on the lap
the beans
the years



Alan: It is good to leave something in the ground for next year’s harvest.  To close the garden gate promising to return.



Last Planting


Still, I plant garlic, shallots,
push the dibble into
October’s moist soil.

Press the cloves down,
smooth-sided, pointy, root-end
first.  Count out –
six across, seven,
the steady rows.

Small offerings to the small
gods of the garden.
Northern, Siberian, Music, Santé,
Dutch Yellow, French.

Tamp the earth, still warm in the sun –
worms still rise at midday – with my palms.
The papered hopes.
Blanket the beds, mulch
against freeze-up.

Swirl of leaves around me,
each colored according to its kind,
not quite ready to fall.