DRY CRIK Journal

                                                           I look for her colored shirt
                                                           through vegetables and spices,
                                                           hose in hand beneath bright faces

                                                           of towering sunflowers, an easy
                                                           walk on gravel by raised beds
                                                           of silt and manure tilled by hand,

                                                           weeded and seeded into a green
                                                           meander between stacked cedar
                                                           logs leftover from the house.

                                                           Skid-steer buckets up the slope
                                                           from where floods meet clay
                                                           above the creek – tiny flecks

                                                           of old mountains mixed and left.
                                                           It all took time. Each in our zone
                                                           when Joe died, we kept his ashes

                                                           close before finding a ridge
                                                           where we could feel him
                                                           working in the garden.