first frost

today i finished out my garden for the summer - meaning, i ripped out all the remaining plants so now there is just a long row of dirt sprinkled with weeds and a lost tomato here and there. i was really putting off this day; i didn't want the need for me to tend it to cease. but it frosted last night, so everything was blackened and wilted anyway (except for the rosemary plant! i dug it up and potted it, and hope to nurse it through the winter months).

so i finished. but i didn't want to be finished. after the work i chose a grassy patch at the end of my row, and lied down in it, and was still. i stayed there for quite a while, thinking about my garden and the earth and the cycle of things and life in general and my life in particular. the sun felt so warm, like being in the middle of a just-baked bread pudding. so many birds singing of their lives - crows and chickadees and goldfinches and sparrows and a dozen others i couldn't recognize - and the crickets too, of course. and the grasses, played upon by the winds. some small (i hope) and unseen insect crawling on my leg. i forget sometimes that i/we share the universe with all these. the sun and the grasses and the beetles and the dirt... we all exist here together on this earth-place. it delighted and awed me to remember that this little song sparrow on the wire and i, we both have a place here, and in some ways depend on each other. this harlequin cabbage beetle (who ate holes in the bok choy! i guess he likes it as much as me) is beautiful in its completeness and intricacies. i don't know how to explain better what i was feeling... just a sense of good and of wholeness.

so now i must include another poem by mary oliver (the last four parts are best)...

Peonies
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklnessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again--
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?