Community Garden Poem by Kirby Wright

Love sometimes feeds off hate, for grounding.
Tomato, a fruit, rhymes with potato, gets served as
A vegetable. Go down to your Community Garden,
You’ll see how red rots. Lazy gardeners, once full
Of good intentions, abandon what they started.
Ignore is a form of hatred—probably makes a
Terrible parent. Ripe begs harvest, wants eaten.
Japanese cucumbers are sweeter than expected.
Woman wheelbarrows yellow squash over
Asphalt to car. Man wearing safari hat bicycles
Down rows of corn. Birds in pumpkin patch
Cross wings, pray for rain or man-made sprinkles
From hoses equipped with shower nozzles.
What happens when hoses can’t reach your heart?
Rectangular plots. Red shines through green vine.
Swiss chard’s making a comeback. Love ripens, brings
Fruition, tests soil for power. Responsibility threatens
Vitality, attraction, spontaneous combustion; reverses
Your sexual motion. To love then hate is typic mixture,
Convinces tomato it’s vegetable. The raspberries are
Experiencing a second coming, they’re the optimists of
The garden. Tomatoes keep rotting. Everything firms
Then softens in tragic garden. Gardening destroys things
Slowly, fakes affection, weakens roots and branches.
A grandfather waters his carrots. Attitudes bloom.
The artichokes need cutting before they become flowers.
Zucchini rests like fat baby on bed, content. Grandpa
Stoops to water, conquers drought. Sun blazes, smiles
Realizing this version of Community Garden will
Come, go, be forgotten, leave seeds behind for children.