Lockdown Gardening in America
Lockdown Gardening in America
In England, they garden. Till hearty loam,
Doing so yields goblets, Henry VIII’s gold coins.
Unearth artifacts for museums, an occasional mantle.
Archeology, ancestry, posterity churned
with aged trowels to seed new queues.
In American upheavals, we strive to harvest
pandemic vegetables and Covid flowers.
A risk: might uncover a tatter of stars and stripes –
in varying accounts. Scars and Gripes smelted
into sovereign gold sequestered brick by brick
at Fort Knox or elite vaults. Pieces of silver
to polish with our thumbs. Bones – black, yellow, red.
Chains intact. Broken teeth. A mule’s curved ribs.
Gavels, nooses, cinders of crosses. Spent
low-caliber cartridges. Tins of witches’ ash.
Flint and arrowheads. Splintered feathers, and beads.
Straw sandals ripped off under iron tracks.
We excavate field stones engraved with rancid slang
and disrespectable epithets. Flush tragic waters.
Stale wind wails, swells our sails with bygone magic.
Red-White-Blue lightning flashes, then gasps.
We taste our sweet fruits, juicy pith on chins.
Overnight luggage, out-of-sight baggage
shouting like silhouettes on the shade.
Both coasts open with absolving tides
as comets skip off the full moon wounding
night clouds tenderly, then splashing into
a muted past beyond the horizon’s transom.
Endurance proves the new normal. Resolute
with morning thermals. Our gardens spawn
fragrance leading somewhere we avoid,
or ignore. Pure daylight in dark distances
beyond today’s bounty. Disregard our rainbow’s
spell unlike the sweep of an English rose’s waft.
I read of historical treasures unearthed in English gardens and fields. What does America find of the history we try to keep buried?
