June and the land is still ours
by Marge Piercy
Lines of wooden and bamboo stakes
in somewhat crooked rows wait
like an incomplete fence for the fifteen
inch tomatoes plants to scale them.
When rain comes and then sun,
everything shoots up like adolescent
boys in a spurt, fuzzy today, next
week tall and looming and loud.
But only the birds are loud here:
soft the distant highway humming
with trucks, the growl of a bike,
a chain saw whining over the hill.
The rusty hinge of the grackle,
the catbird who infuriates the cats,
the male cardinal whose call I echoed
till he flew at me, furious to attack
and then stopped in midair, embarrassed
I think. The sip sip of the wren
who ignores the fine house I put up
and nests in the propane tank hole.
All these are the music of my days
in June before the summer people
come with loud radios and drunken
arguments at 2 a.m., roaring parties
and all the noises of the city
they carry here. June is still
an unbroken blue egg, that soon
will be scrambled and eaten.
Copyright © 2011 by Marge Piercy.
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