Into the Garden

When I heard you were gone,
of course I went into the garden.
Barefoot in the damp greens,
I tore my hair, looking skyward
because what was there to do
but tend to the details:
forms accounts certificates
activities I had no desire for.

Among the lettuces, shiny after rain,
among pea sprouts, cilantro’s lace,
where everything was yet so new,
I raised up my arms in a lament
you could no longer hear or comfort.
Went down on my knees, weeping.
Saw crabgrass and purslane emergent
between the rows and began to weed.

*

Popcorn

Each night before the 11 o’clock news,
popcorn: my father shaking the pan,
scenting the house with hot oil,
waiting for kernels to burst
into cumulus shapes he’d douse
in salt and melted butter.
Few rituals could be better.

Sometimes, awake before midnight
in the soft dark, I miss the rattle and pop,
lonely for the comforting familiarity
that accompanied my frequent insomnia.
I want my childhood aroma again.
I want the man standing at the stove
before the late-night news begins.

*

Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her most recent poetry collection is Abundance/Diminishment. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, Ekphrasis Review, ONE ART, and many others, as well as in numerous anthologies, six chapbooks, and two previous collections. She chronicles her writing, reading, and garden on a long-running blog at annemichael.blog