Rachel Hadas

[from Rachel Hadas's Halfway Down the Hall]

Still Life in Garden

Speechless, considering, feet well apart:
exactly how my mother would take root
deep in the garden, so you stand. It’s early;
a summer day spreads out.
Bushier by the hour, long wavering rows
form lines and paths and furrows as of thought
marking a brow.
It’s a small garden; no
reason for amazement if you tread
neatly in the footsteps of the dead.
Stealthily day by day
tomatoes, beans, cucumbers take on gloss
and heft, and everything seems effortless,
except the digging, planting, weeding—plus
the same vague tenderness,
the deep and inexhaustible green brood
you now are lost in, standing where she stood.