HARDENING OFF
Blond mornings stretch,
naked sugar flashes. In the trees,
a hundred shades of micro-green
refract tipping frequencies,
chlorophyll in bright chartreuses.
In the greenhouse,
lettuces we’ve coddled,
kale that’s germinating
purplish gold—our speckled trout
(o tender leggy phloem) explode out—
sporting cracked seed husks, toppled helmets.
We turn off piped-in electric heat.
We march them out to line the open dirt.
They wait in flats outside all morning.
Cash crop. Green army.
We entrust them to the season.
Weather them & set to digging.
Kneel & copy what the trees
are even now above us doing—
coax the sugar out of light.
Turn the light into the feast of leaving.
----
METHOD
In the dirt you dig fragments.
Turn them and ponder.
Weed chard. Forms
morph like clouds.
At lunch, you write down
how in this jungle
a gem-backed toad startled
and hopped away—
how tiger lilies trumpet the sun.
In the bean patch brown spiders,
egg sacs on their backs.
Toddling through shadows,
sturdy & wobbling, they are
fragile, pregnant as summer now is—
---
SOLSTICE (LAKE)
Once again today our patron star
whose ancient vista is the long view
turns, full brightness now and here.
We loll outdoors, sing, make fire.
We have no henge here but after
our swim, linger
by the pond. Dapples flicker
on the pine trunks by the water.
Buzz & hum & wing & song combine.
Light is monument to its own passing.
Frogs content themselves in bullish chirps,
hoopskirt blossoms
on thimbleberries fall, peeper toads
hop, lazy—
Apex. A throaty world sings ripen.
The grove slips past the sun’s long kiss.
We dress.
We head home in other starlight.
Our earthly time is sweetening from this.
---
SOIL BLACK
Overcast in the fields
meticulous labor
to rip the unwanted
haul weeds to the woods.
Wheelbarrows of waste.
The baby I planted this year
was only tissue. The botched ovum
did not grow, did not even sprout.
On the computer, its sac
was empty, soil black.
I bow into absence.
& yes I know
many women have harder labors
strapped to the seasons
& to the children
strapped to their backs—
All poems are reprinted with permission from Work & Days by Tess Taylor, published by Red Hen Press. redhen.org/tess-taylor