01
A poem about land use
(I can see your building now).
I think you told me land use
regulates the future usage of
land. A garden must foresee growth
02
I am not sure if I got to ask you
how past usage regulates land
—I’d guess from what you taught
me, it keeps going.
Usage is pickled.
03
I try to know this but I only
think in today. My body is something
of a kept garden with no
seeds. I have you preserved
but I have no seeds. I don’t know
if jams have seeds.
Are all pickings in my life
seedless?
04
I know what a garden in pain
feels. Not all winter gardens feel
pain during summer and summer
gardens—do they know
or, at least think, to be
seeded?
05
Gardens without seeds, must they
be torn without seeding?
Cultivation it must be their motivation.
Do gardens know the wind
gives their seeds away!
06
Do whispers from the grass
speak of their fading nutrition?
Must the garden become a bog
slogged in its reaping to keep
its feed?
07
What does the garden think
or does it know?
08
When you left, you took into you me.
When you were here, we took into each other.
Consumption or sequestration
—I can't tell which.
09
I want seeds in my garden. It remains
so empty—only thinking not knowing
of its barren arid field.
10
To see a garden bare is
raising the re-question if it’s still even
a garden that remains.
11
What does the winter garden know
in summer? Must it wish for darkness
and shades? Must the summer garden
resent the winter garden?
12
What if the summer garden seedless
becomes a seedless winter garden?
Are both still gardens?
13
A garden has more to its parts. Its
soul must preside with
foresight of the wind to seed
its usage. It must have birds
to come and pass along run off
nutrients (poop). The beauty
attracts nutrients through the
birds
birds for the beauty attracts the
bees
bees for sweetness attracts the
paws
paws of the warm scavenging
bears
bears who find the warmth
cozy
cozy enough to call it their summer
garden
(garden of winter they didn’t know yet still
seedless).
14
My friend left my garden did
the seasons change? What did you
leave in me? Is it a seed
or a jam?
A preserve—perhaps. It’s hard to say
I still don’t know which is which.
15
I’ll admit. I feel like
a seedless
garden.
There is no hope to find
seeds
in me. I am a piece of
land
whose usage has no regulation.
I have no mandate or cultivation.
I have no seeds of my own.
16
I am asking this garden for
help. Its seeds are already
accounted for. The
squirrel
asked politely for the nuts. The
birds
plucked the seeds. The
weasel
weaseled the beetle.
17
Sometimes gardens are empty!
18
What makes it still a garden?
Does it think or does it know
where it is? Do gardens become
mere pastures or do glorious
pastures desire a pastor to bless
them into a garden?
19
Do gardens prefer fruits or
shades or annuals or
perennials? Do they prefer
heirloom or feeding the
hungry with Eli Lilly’s Sanger
machine.
20
What do gardens do when their
loved
their foliage
lay mummified in lichen?
Do they seek migrating birds
to drop it into the Baltic Sea?
21
I want to drop into the sea.
I want to find the Plankton
who started the first garden
and ask him what he knows.
Tell me what to think.
22
I am a seedless garden
desperate for seed
or a sweet family to
pickle you
to take you and germinate you
placing you
preserved, pickled, fermented
in my garden.
23
I am a seedless garden
who wants a seedling
tree to grow through me
to see it in the sky
everlasting. But
all I have is an allium.
24
Is there a way gardens can
find something? Can you give
my garden a usage? An order
or mandate. Tell me
what is it used for:
For the better good?
For the public good?
For our good?
25
With no usage, I am
not a garden I am land.
Land that is here now,
but land that is nattered away.
26
I had usage I had food
to give you. I am back from
my trip can I cook you blue
roasted potatoes? Can
you come to my garden now?
Give my garden you or give it
at least a sign that I
am a garden.
27
I am a seedless garden with no seasons.