It's Still Life

A Gardener’s Story

I.
It’s a duel with nature,
hack back nettles
and choke weed tendrils,
slash away brambles that

in August I’ll praise for blackberries,

but for now, those thorns
are dragon’s teeth.
They bite
and won’t be tamed.

II.

My mother grew hydrangeas
the colour of alpacas, pulled
weeds with her bare hands.

She took a scythe to the brambles
but picked all the blackberries

for jam.

Pine trees’ yellow breathless pollen
made her eyes swell and
she’d cough until the first snow fell.

When she was 72, she thought she
had dysentery,

but it was just a bad oyster.

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These poems/prose are draft versions, written in participation of Miz Quickly’s prompts and Writers’ Digest (Poetic Asides) November poem-a-day challenge. The aim: to produce a chapbook for submission. ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Images are ©Misky, and created using AI-Midjourney.