THE GARDEN
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.
