Planting

By Daniel W. Brown

We trowel in moist brown earth
mist holds dawn to the green leaves 
of seedlings we plant 

placed just so
in improvised fashion
by annual practice

our knees ache when planting peppers,
early arrivers, ripening green 
maturing as cathedral red bells

a geography of purple
green Italian and Thai basils
for colorful spiced August pesto

journeys of Japanese tri-colored 
and sweet heirloom yellow plum tomatoes 
for late afternoon salads

and stripped zucchini 
potted in a mound 
for every cuisine imaginable

in our straw and brimmed hats,
gray gloves
and careful balance

another summer passes
where we compost, water 
and find our root systems mingle together.

Daniel W. Brown is a retired Special Education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior.  At 72 he published his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. Now a year later he faces a backlog of dozens of poems he’s compiling into various chapbooks to try to send into the world. He’s been published in various journals and anthologies and writes each day about music, art and whatever else catches his imagination.