Saying Goodbye to Our Summer Garden

My soil-rubbed hands pull tenacious

vines from damp earth (no gloves required).

I remember:

sliced Cherokee Purple tomatoes,

roasted Little Finger eggplant and spicy, charred Anaheims.

 

I will preserve the scent and taste

of the tomatoes, oregano, basil, peppers

in my skin for winter.

Mason jars gleaming on a shelf to savor.

I will close my eyes and smell a sachet of hot sun plants,

watch sassy hummingbirds.

Busy honeybees and a breeze will warm

my heart for rain.

 

The rain comes,

not just in the nighttime,

and the earth welcomes the wet

for springtime and new starts.

The weathered soil just resting for next time.

(The rosemary tree deserves its own poem.)

Tahiti Sunset

The roses bloom in deep autumn,
Impervious to the foreshadowing of a Bay winter.
I can relate, though I do crave the deluge they predict.

The protest against hibernation,
Push of petals toward cold, morning air.
Just a slice of sunshine this time of year.

The blooms’ spicy scents sharpen with my attention.

Utah Home

A friend of mine recently asked me when I would stop calling Utah home. The answer is never. That could be the end of this little essay. Short and bittersweet. But there’s so much more to say. 

Twelve years in California, and I still daydream about my Utah home. I always will.

It is difficult to mark time with rain. One season seeps into another. Green, then golden, then green again. 

I remember summer nights that never cool down. The hills on fire with sunlit, autumn-touched quakies. The quiet, curving turns in dry powder. The smell of desert-born storms racing and washing over the Wasatch. 

And always, my family.