After a wet spring and dry summer, and a fall
mild enough to forget how our family's
fever passed one to the next for a month,
how fires moved from the streets to the mountains
to the mouths of strangers on the news. Finally
I cut the vines down, pulled the tomato and pepper
plants by their stalks, chopped the rotten pumpkins
into mash with a shovel and left it all. Plans we made,
and plans we watched waste away. The garden shredded
to its roots for mice to ravage, the voles to tunnel
and nest, and late at night, when all the road traffic
quiets and the moon has finished its red phase
for the season, the deer, a dozen or more
will part the neighbor's dry corn, cross the yard
to graze our annual debris. From my bedroom
window I’ll watch them, a scene so simple it must
be heavy with meaning. Just deer in a garden,
feeding on the scraps of a season. The house lit
from the inside by television glow. Sometimes
all the repetition feels futile. We take, we use,
we discard. We try to hide the bitterness from
our voices. Love, let’s not go there yet.
Our aging parents pace their homes
in quarantine, we’re afraid to breathe near them.
We’re afraid of outliving anything, and afraid of not.
This morning frost covered the last growing
squash plants, I’ll pick them before they die,
simmer and season a soup for the week to come.
That’s as far as we’ll take it for now. There’s always
a winter and with luck, always a spring.