Midnight Summer Gardeners Poem by MARINA GIPPS

Lazy lovers; every word of their diabolical machinations:
Spit bubbles spread over faces, adventure of self-entrapment.
All owed to that luminous sky that held
the longest kiss in the entire world,
so long people threw tomatoes
that grew in a garden under a moon unearthed
in the backwards glances of the questioning.

For it was jealousy’s seriosos who were being facetious
as gardens green like vegetables sprouted melodiously…

All this, as stars spread the spoil of appendages-
as arthritic fingers, too tired to love.
Below, the brittle moan of yellow lukewarm cattle
mowing that sugar plain of long ago.
They carry star-glow on their backs.
A new and dying breed floating in a field
where so much blooming goes undone.