”You going away with no word of farewell
Will there be not a trace left behind
Well, I could've loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind
You know that was the last thing on my mind*”
Tom Paxton
<>

the lyrics get caught in my throat,
of Tom’s guilty confessional,
so instead of voice emitted,
the letters and words
fall to the ground en-
capsulated in tears
multicolored,
the salt & &pepper
coloration of sad regret
for the multifold &
man-I-fold
mistakes
recalled in black & white graydations
of reflections of loves lost that yet haunt
and now honored, at last, 
 with their very own
words of
farewell

Earthen, is what makes it so,
Through waking moments vertigo,
This drive which makes the day begin
Through early morning stumbleing,

To run the clods of rich, black soil
Through fingers, roughened by my toil,
To gaze with pride across this field
Of furrows deeply ploughed, to yeild.

Here, my quintessential joy
To smile as golden grain deploys
To emerald shoots, in morning light,
By row for harvesting, when right.

For earthen, is what makes it so,
By morning's warm and pleasant glow,
Standing midst my field of wheat
Enriches soul, to make complete.

M.

“Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Our bodies are our gardens,
to which our wills are gardeners…”

      – Iago, Act 1, Scene 3 in Shakespeare's "Othello”

A commandment to wellness,
spoke aloud, with resolute foursquare,
of which no doubt,
upon whom the responsibility lays,
each of us poets individually

I am not a gardner,
know not the pleasure of rich dark soil
loam, cupped in my hand,
or the stroking of first blooms,
the genteel of  spring,
afternoon delights for the eyes,
but for me, no elemental quivering
no instinct bids me
dig, plant, water and worry…

but my body’s garden another matter
for pillaging insects,
the bollwevil
and other assorted devils
planted internally and infernally
breeding
the ills of human failings,
with tulip yellow couragelessness,
they infiltrate & exploit
the crevices where our fallacies
buried but unearthed

what is this longevity word?

we've live as long as intended,
forces internal,
weathered by outside forces,
gales amazing and pelting storms
within and without
combative

born from earth’s produce,
we tend our own garden unequally,
inconsistently  
though gardens demand, preferring
constantly
li
loving attentions

*but humans are notoriously of poor
attention spans and we tend to tend
in spurs of moments,
some lasting decades

and thus or thus,
a poor epitaph to
our fallow falling fallen
humanity