We Didn’t Ruin Everything
There is a patch of earth
in our garden, eight by eight feet, where
nothing grows. The soil seems
fertile—dark, damp, small pieces
of mulch, our leftovers,
surface with rain
then ride back below. In April
there are exactly four hours
of direct sunlight, by June
the lit hours approach six and a half.
Basil, seeded indoors and grown
two inches, marjoram, even mint, a few
peppers, kale, and cauliflower. We kept
them warm seven weeks until
we believed they were ready. Outside,
we forced open small holes and planted
their delicate bodies, covered
the white network
of translucent roots.
We watered them and waited.
The earth didn't even try,
we said. Define try, the expert
at the gardening store
asked and then without hearing
our answer, gave us some of his seedlings.
Later, we brought their dry bodies back.
Refused is the only word we could find
to describe what had happened.
It’s not our fault, we told him, we read
the instructions,
describing our process, which was
paradigmatic,
we said, the way
the clouds moved during
those weeks, the irrigation
we remembered to schedule, the compost
we'd placed, tamped down
with our fingers, our fingernails
black-rimmed for days. Meanwhile,
the summers became longer, the bees
and butterflies fewer, the news anchor
repeating the same forecasts. It's not us,
we said, and felt bad for
not being able to tell
what had gone wrong.
Denouement
The Sycamore rows its great boat
into the roughed night, its outsize arms
slapping each other, trails a nail back and forth
over the roof of the garage. All night
we hear the groaning and fall asleep
to its ominous promise. It will soon
have to come down. That we already know.
It’s dying, inside, its dark pitch, an umbrella
of illness, its husk already half-hollowed. A thick blanket
of vines has climbed up the root flare
and into its brown branches, a leafy
luxuriant disguise. We thought that it might be
the vines’ fault, their weight strangling
and girding the tree’s growth. The arborist claimed
it was already too late. I suppose
that’s what this season is: a search
for something to blame for this sickness.
Rain. Wind. Snow. We talk about hurricanes.
I don’t know if it’s helplessness
or hope, but neither of us want to call it.
Sarah Wetzel is the author of the poetry collections The Davids Inside David, recently released from Terrapin Books, River Electric with Light, which won the AROHO Poetry Publication Prize and was published by Red Hen Press in 2015, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, which won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press in 2010. When not shuttling between her two geographic loves—Rome, Italy and New York City—Sarah is Publisher and Editor at Saturnalia Books, and a PhD student in Comparative Literature in the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. www.sarahwetzel.com.
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