Another disastrous year, he laughs.
 
April: Pepper seedlings left outside, shot through with frost.
May: Thriving tomato sprouts scorched by sudden heat.
Rare Swiss chard mistaken for weeds, flung to the compost.
                                           
June and July: everything under- or over-watered,
aphids viewed as benign till almost too late,
and then the pesticide carried away to nearby broccoli.
 
That night, that night in August
when he left the gate ajar, and the roaming rabbits
moved in for a leveling gourmet marathon –
what a story, that one, one for the gardening ages.
 
All alone, out on his porch, he considers:
How bumbling and unprofitable my efforts.
How small and inept I am,
but we have had a summer adventure,
these earthy things and I.
 
In the softened light of a candle he is pouring champagne
and toasting, tipping the flute’s edge to the season past
and the last of his yield, on his plate:
 
the lone sweet corn ear, its twenty-five kernels gleaming,
the handful of bush beans, tenderly anorexic,
the mini-eggplant that might have graced a starlet’s ear.
 

From Not Quite Eden (Fireweed Press, 2010).
Used here with permission.