A Man and His Horse

In the early morning mulch
With a tiller in my hand
With a sweatband on my head
And a horse at my command,
I’m a long way from done,
Don’t know how long I will last
In the early morning mulch,
With a tee shirt from the past.

See the corner, see the shade,
See the place we’ll make a berm.
There’ll be dogwoods in a glade
On a mound we hope is firm.
There’ll be flowers on the curve
When we line them out in blocks;
All the colors, all the forms,
All the social after-shocks.

What a shape we have to tend,
Like a quarter of a pie,
With a swamp we must rescind
Where the low spots never dry.
So we garden on the left
And we garden on the right,
Always thinking of a curve
For the senses to delight.

This will be a redbud stand
In a shape that’s like the lot.
We’ll have three there on a berm
Long before the Spring is shot.
We’ll have veggies in the back,
With a view of Heron’s Cove,
With the company of birds;
This is why we made the move.

Things look closer than the pic,
It’s a wide-angle, you know.
It is only half a click
To the haven down below.
There are turtles on a log,
There are ducks upon the dock.
You can feel how tired I am,
Like a run-down mantel clock.

One more pass before I quit,
Then another, then again.
Haven’t done this since Vermont,
Sixteen years ago was when.
I was fifty, I was fit,
There was a river in the view;
Now we live on Hidden Lake,
KEB and me, and sometimes you.