Your Heathcote Poem

Your poem took more nails than you expected.
Trips to the barn, the plywood wheelbarrow,
the Plexiglas, the greenhouse blueprint,
the revisions. Constructive criticism.

And the budget, and the dump runs,
and the workshop registration…

Your poem took all season.
Two hours every morning
to charm the buds from their beds,
to nurture tall pride in the crocus,
muster stout cabbages from
windowsill beginnings.

And the raking, and the plucking,
with an editor’s consultation…

In the kitchen,
couplets and quatrains
would clank and boil
in kettle and colander
as your conductor’s spoon
traced the seismograph
of your inventor’s abandon.

And the shopping, and the canning,
and the food co-op printout…

So when my printed pages with
pampered phrases come sailing onto
bulletin boards like paper airplanes,
not like your masterpieces–
pounding out, digging up, steaming tender
the touchable specter of Justice–
the roof patched…
the bill paid…
no, my snowflake cutouts garner
only your strange patience,
the tolerance of gardeners.

—-Wren Tuatha

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