Tuesday, August 19, 2025

August morning

is cooler, than last week's steady

torching of the garden & parks


on the kitchen table are summer's produce:

juicy peaches, ripe mangoes, melons, berries


from the nearby grocery store, including

pots of rosemary, basil and lemon grass  


the gifts from summer also include

home grown flowers from marigolds


to zinnias, whose seeds i will carefully

zipped up for next spring's planting


i love watering the back garden,

mesmerized by the sprinkling waterdrops


and even now that its a bit cooler,

i love the green lushness of the fields


savoring each rain downpour   

as maple leaves are slowly turning brown


what we planned at the start of year

has given us a clear direction:


this home is more precious than ever-

our spring's sale showing did not materialize


which turns out to be blessing after all

as i slowly hang up paintings, unpack kitchen gadgets 


from the garage, arrange a vase, curtains

cushions, bed coverings, books that


give our space a unique look

not the ubiquitous bland "perfect for sale home"


i breathe it all until plant questions intrude:

when to bring back all the tropical 


plants indoors?

and where to fit them all in our living room?


Posted for the dVerse Poets Pub - Poetics - Where do we go from here? Hosted by Melissa Lemay.  Thanks for your comments and visits.


11 comments:

  1. The opening lines resonate, Grace, it’s cooler here too, and the produce on your table has made my mouth water. I also enjoy watering the garden. And we’ve delayed selling our house for a bit, too.

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  2. This sounds like a wonderful walk to plan and get ready... we still have a lot of tomatoes and chili waiting to be harvested.

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  3. I love your questions in the end. I don’t have so many plants anymore. I used to have some out in the mudroom (porch) that I brought in for the winter months.

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  4. Your produce sounds delicious and I have the same question about the plants 😊

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  5. Sounds like a lot going on in your space, Grace, and you're rolling with it. I enjoyed your tour.

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  6. I love the lines that discuss your ‘not the ubiquitous bland "perfect for sale home".’ I love the lived in feel of homes that’ve been loved and cluttered. Thank you very much for your poem.

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  7. Lots of folks are holding off selling houses they've been in for so long because buying another has gotten so expensive -- in Florida, home insurance is merciless when you can get it -- the vision becomes less of new horizons than of re-greening familiar ones. We just had to empty out to fumigate the house for termites and acres of house plants my wife has accumulated went from house to yard and garage and then back in again. Whew. Home is so much better when there's no place like it.

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  8. Grace, it sounds as though yours is a home to be lived in, treasured forever ... love the detailed description, as though I walked beside you!

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  9. Grace, I like the list of produce and the shift in the poem when you begin to move back in. Life is change, and it sounds like you are embracing what you have.

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  10. Grace, you raise many questions that resonate with me - the Olive tree is too big to bring in so frost fleece will have to do and this year I planted geraniums which need bringing in if I am to keep them but they are cheap to buy and might be too big if kept - and then I look at our roasted tomato walls upstairs and wonder, when the time comes, whether we would need to blandify the room or trust to finding someone who loves what we love...

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