Community Garden Poem by Val Morehouse

On screen the cursor winks its robin’s eye, “Seek here.”
Cleaned of weeds and plowed, the fallow field of ragged
rows is laid out and waiting.
Beckoning imagination the blank page is ready to
be furrowed, tagged, and numbered.
All that is missing is a gardener’s touch.

Let me be the one to call down birdsong into this
feast for the mind, hum with creativity enough to
brave chaos the way a field mouse seeks sustenance.
Let me plow raw ground for possibility,
coax form from content, unearth a terrain of names,
turn up dates, publishers, and genres for the taking.

Troweling substance into subject, I catalog thought,
seed meaning into invisible sub-fields until
wit launches like a flight of butterflies.
For you I leave a trail of authors revealed,
titles saved under hot caps of attention until the covers
split open, cotyledons marching into rows of good news.

Notes sprout from these spines,
annotations shaped and pruned into clues.
Inside this maze made for the curious,
I have placed mysteries squat as mantis cases
to ambush the unwary.
Stalk Sherlock, or be confounded.

There will always be poems for unveiling,
lifetimes ripening on the fences of experience,
and passion disguised as a simple valentine:
SEE “Love Stories” carved in an oak’s bark,
initials bracketing the “+” captured by ♥
and applauded by a page-turning breeze.

“New, neww, newww books, ” coos the dove.
“CDs, DVD’s, pretty little songs! ” trills the meadowlark.
Here history stands at attention, still soldiering
facts like ants running to some foregone conclusion.
But today, I unlock a gate to this community garden, hang out
the sign that reads, “Library Open. Free Plots Available.”