for Seamus Heaney



Murmuring his morning hosanna the gardener 
pulls on dungarees and buttons his shirt
his chiseled fingers grip the spade
behind his cabin door:
outside the flicker of sticky tulips
good-day! snags his eye
and cluck-tongued he notes
the spread of creeping charlie
flophouse daisies
meandering chicory
and impatiens lining the path
he hammered years ago.

He wields the spade to lip the soil
turns its waste scruff side-up
discards the arrogant roots 
of maple
          dahlia tinder
              Black-eyed Susans
and crocuses’ remains
dehydrated cabbages and milkweed stubble 
to unwrap a glimmer of moss.

To free the soil is his infinite goal
stiff-browed he picks out slugs like polka-dots
from the full-grown globes of tomatoes
measures the biceps of burly cucumbers
gauges the lopsided noggins
                    of butternut squash
and the cherry grins of apricots
acknowledges flocks of wormless apples.

His roses unscroll with a bravado 
as concentric as the papery greens 
of snowpeas between a tumult of hollyhocks 
happy as waterfalls.

The digger wipes his spade
surveys the heads of rutabagas
the cadmium yellows of pumpkins
                             and carrot-tops
until his waterspout signals
the oasis of noon.

The spade is an ink-dabbed nib
with which to explore the soil’s black pages
to unearth imagery like oxygen
or cut back words like weeds—
what power in the curve of a human hand
digging imagination is unpredictable as tending corn 
some grow ears and some do not hear.

Turning back toward the hut
he listens for the ground’s exhalations
its inhabitants snug as sleep
their humus warms his body
bare-smiled he savours their orchestrations.

Under the settling sky
the weight of his prize cargo expands 
as he rubs the water from his brow
latches the door and goes back inside
humming an evening hosanna.

From A Demolition Symphony
©1995 Sonja A. Skarstedt

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