by Susan Vespoli
It was the year the garden
wouldn’t grow. Only a few cupped
palms of sour tomatoes, never red.
Lettuce leaves limp and bug laden.
It was the year my ocotillo cracked in half,
crashed to the ground with a thud. The year
the U.S. seemed to follow suit. The year of no
sunflowers in the long rectangular bed stretched
beneath my office window, (okay, one spindly
stalk sprouted, then leaned over and croaked),
the plot where the previous year’s crop had risen
basketball-player high, a community of petaled
faces so prolific, neighbors would stroll their babies
past to point and smile. It was the year I bought five
packets of vinca seeds and a big bag of rich mulch,
spread and sprinkled everything over the barren earth,
and every couple days, through hell-hot summer temps
and nightly nightmare news, I dragged the hose to the dry
dirt, drenched it until little green arms poked through.
And the arms grew bodies topped with buds folded
first like origami stars, then unfurled into coral,
purple, and fuchsia 1960’s-peacenik flower-power
blossoms that bushed out and flourished like hope.
Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ and believes in the power of poetry to stay sane. Her poems have been published in The New Verse News, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Rattle, and other cool spots.
