One Day, Working
after Ted Kooser
for Beth
Last Saturday, we spent the afternoon
tending to the garden we’d left too long
on its own. While the children played half-naked
in the yard shooting the hose pipe at anything
that moved, I fought the lawless hedges,
and you pulled blackberry vines. I am certain
there were green snakes coiled in the branches
near your fingers, or hornet’s nests throbbing
from all our work, that would have scattered us
back to a day of bills or cleaning inside.
But on this day, the boys ran in the water,
the dog rolled in the grass, and you
stood there glowing in the June sun,
all floral and sweet as a breath to be taken.
