January orders
by Marge Piercy
Snow turns the garden white
as soap powder with blue shadows
striping the abraded furrows.
Even the pebbles in the drive
glint with ice, but inside bent
over an old coffeetable dragged
from the shed, we peruse out loud
seed catalogs, debate inflated
verbiage on tomatoes, peppers,
lettuce. What glorious photos
of polished perfect eggplants,
of even orthodontist rows
of corn kernels like model’s teeth.
Everything is super early, tasty
and resistant to all plagues
known to the studious gardener.
Surely we’ll be buried in squash.
No cuke beetles will nibble on us.
Our harvests are blessed in advance
by glossy pages of promises
that seduce us to order too much
of what will endure weeks of rain,
a month or two of drought, beetles,
chipmunks, deer, hail and hurricane
before we plop it into our mouths,
the freezer, the frying pan, or, alas,
rotting into the compost pile.
Copyright © 2013 by Marge Piercy.
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