Elizabeth Joy Levinson

As expected, a weekend in the garden did me a world of good.  I replanted about twenty strawberry plants that had spread from runners all over the garden, tilled the vegetable bed, harvested compost (which I swear smells better than anything else in the world), and started to sow the yard with clover seed.  I watched termites erupt from the ground, I pinched back unwanted leaf buds on my lilac, and I planted bright annuals to keep me until my perennials bloom.

I have to go back to the compost bin to get that bad metaphor I promised.  It’s a large bin, cheap and plastic, no fancy bells and whistles or worm drawers; just a big plastic box with a lid.  We’ve been feeding the bin for a year now and while I turn it periodically, we haven’t really taken anything out of it.  Harvesting the compost is hard work for me because I’m short and the bin is tall.  The good stuff, the worm castings, all end up in the bottom & I have to shovel all the garbage off to one side to get down to what I want.  But it is wonderful stuff and I’m expecting a much healthier garden this year because of the addition of organic matter.

I said I was going to try to write a poem everyday this month.  And I have been, but it’s all garbage, really.  I’m trying some new things, I’m trying to play more, I’m trying out different voices.  But I think that most of what I’m doing now is going to have to be turned over and over, shoveled around, and fed to the worms before it has much value to a reader.  I’ll be lucky if some of these pieces only take a year to shape up, but this is part of my love of poetry, that each day brings possibility that I might learn something or change somehow, offering new routes into my work.