Gardeners

This poem goes out to
gardeners everywhere,
to those who spend
sleepless nights
obsessed with seed
catalogs, worrying
about what the garden
will look like in
late summer, if the
onions really will
keep bugs away from
the tomatoes. To all
of us who believe that
somehow the right garden
will finally bring us
love. Who lovingly
place seeds at precise
distances apart, hoping,
this year, to be
discovered, a humble master
lost amid the crowds of
the flashy green thumbs
of the world, timid but
determined to see the crops
through to the end, no matter
how harsh the season.
It's clear a gardener
can be no slacker,
no wayfarer, can have
no doubts about his calling.
All of these are desirable
traits in a man or woman.
Woe is he who cannot be
the gardener he was
meant to be.

(2007)