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.