Intentions

INTENTIONS

The neighbor wants to plant a garden 

with me in the sunny strip of field between

our houses. I know he is hoping to grow

an excuse to rent a tractor and spend

an afternoon with a tiller, which 

I would rather not do because I believe

there are softer ways to foster growth

than seeing what the grower’s guts 

look like dried out in the sun, 

but I won’t say this to him because 

there are deeper things than topsoil, 

like Eddie, my neighbor who wants

our roots to tangle beneath the property line. 

It is the same conundrum as the empty can

of coffee grounds he keeps between his feet

on his zero-turn, driving down 

to sprinkle whatever chemical they contain

on any anthill he sees, regardless

of whose property it’s on or how near

my plants. He is worried about the girls, 

I know, probably thinking of his own 

grown children with ants running up 

their legs. I am worried about them too, 

which is why I don’t like chemicals

around my garden, but prone as we are

to fence them off they are not wholly separate

fields, spirit and vegetable, which leaves us

to trust that the sheer good of one can serve 

as antidote to the poison of the other.