Someday Crop: A Sestina

 Today she labored in the garden which includes

  meticulously buried seeds in mounded rows

  with signs on sticks to signify this someday crop

  of radish, lettuce, broccoli, and all the like

  ‘neath warming sun, a place well known by keen eyed birds

  which, in the past, would stop here once her plants did sprout.

  As history reminds, the healthy seeds should sprout

  just as before, with signs of spring, that would include

  a gentle sun that melts the frost and hungry birds

  that flock about the tender shoots aligned in rows.

  But well you know that circumstances seem more like

  mere happenstance when planning for a veggie crop.

  She waters all the seeds sown in this someday crop

  and calculates what time might pass before they sprout.

  She reads the weather page but finds she doesn’t like

  hypotheses of climate change, for such includes

  her space, her land. It could, no doubt, destroy the rows

  she’s planted, leaving naught for her nor myriad birds.

  For she supports the predilections of these birds,

  that silently flock to this place to taste the crop

  the swell of tender shoots along the many rows

  is glorious. She tugs at weeds so up will sprout

  the robust produce to be canned. The list includes

  tart relishes and chutneys that her neighbors like.

  Hat in hand, she peers with arms akimbo. She’d like

  hues of green; there’s still only brown, much like the birds

  she wonders why they’ve stayed away, if this includes

  the migrant types, not yet arrived to eye her crop

  of fresh spring greens, of course, that is if such should sprout.

  She shields her eyes, surveying dearth among the rows.

  In evening news the candidates are lined in rows

  by left and right (and centrist types). Some seem to like

  to stay the course, they have no plans that fully sprout.

  Their status quo Kyoto take: “It’s for the birds.”

  She wonders if they understand a someday crop

  cannot endure the indecision that includes

  Ignoring trends and more than that, crises that sprout,

  that spurn advances by the birds. Her soil includes

  a battlefield, a raging war with this, her crop.

                      Laura Dvorak