Why I Killed the Rhubarb

[fflo]

        Why I Killed the Rhubarb, or
    Imagining Writing a Poem For Olja

 for Olja
 & not just because she likes rhubarb

I put foot to shovel
& started this poem:
"I'll spare you all
rationales around
cultivation intention"

---then will come lines
on having stooped to yank
up, strip out, gently clear
a year's dead from two
worse than fallow---step one
on the way to this killing.

These big orange roots are damned
hearty, deep.  I shake off earth before
tossing chopped carcass hunks into debris.

Next comes a (prosaic, Latinate) nod
to context:  post-excavation
preservation, the year's plan
until I can see what's what
in these up-cropping mysteries I'm left with,
leftover, left under the overgrowth.
This to say I've been careful, caring:
much caritas; little courage.

I cross wrists on the handle and lean,
like some ancestor, and look:  that's
two of the four now.  Thirsty.

Last I'll write, hitting hard, sharp
monosyllables of need---urge,
drive, spur---flat-out compulsion,
given what's given---to destroy.
Replace the planting of another
with my own.  My tomatoes.  My
first.  This is the thing I imagine
I'll barely need reference
for you.  Subtle here!  But what
images, outside this clumpy garden
of metaphor tangled in metaphor?

Time to fetch a tiller.  I could
leave the last plant.  Fact, I
shall.  I do.  The poem won't
be as good, but later you'll
make me that trade for a pie,
and now I can stop digging and
drink down one very tall water.

Comments

indeed

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

and i can only make one rhube plant's worth of pies anyway (we need to observe our summer healthy nutrition plan:).

this is only the second time i've had a poem 'dedicated' to me. no killing referenced in the first one :), but i'll taking this the keatsean way, so as to read this to be about 'dying into life'...

btw, tomato is 'paradajz' [pronounced the same as paradise] in serbian.

typo, i swear :)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

my least favorite typo is the one that happens while i'm discussing how things go in a different language. then one can never tell whether i actually know how to do it in this one. anyway, i do know that it should be i will be understanding this emaciation to come out of the keatsean tradition etc.

Re: indeed

[fflo.livejournal.com]

sow yer own paradajz... gotta love it.

hadn't thought writing a killing for you might be like a gift of knives --- thanx for taking it not the curséd way. and, of course: typo, schmypo... many a copy editor is (perhaps surprisingly) forgiving of typos, i among 'em. besides, livejournalland is hardly the final draft of your forthcoming Meisterarbeit.

others' typos are easier to take, though, aren't they. ;]

Re: indeed

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

...esp since i can't afford to make many kinds of jokes that would immediately 'confirm' suspicions that i don't really speak any english...

Re: indeed

[fflo.livejournal.com]

it IS one of my privileges (and pleasures) to invoke, for fun, such lovely nuggets as "irregardless" and "tain't", along with (as you may've noticed) all manner of variant spelling of appeal, usually for sound. thus every spellchecker i break in has the likes of "dunno" and "nuthin'" added to its acceptable spellings toot-sweet.

('spartly, too, perhaps, a reaction against the english teacher father---where 'father' here is literal.)

Re: indeed

[fflo.livejournal.com]

meant to add: i'm sorry you are constrained by idiots and xenophobes from this simple joy.

Re: indeed

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i still try to do it when it feels safe, i.e. never in tx :) but occasionally around here when i know that the people listening are familiar and comfortable with the miraculous possibility that one person can play with more than one language.

i increasingly find that most people aren't even comfortable playing with one.

Re: indeed

[fflo.livejournal.com]

agreed. tho from another POV it *is rather a sickness. {chuckle}

Re: indeed

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

a perversion even!

Re: indeed

[fflo.livejournal.com]

btw, i was just going to wait & ask in person, but do you feel like telling here of the earlier poem dedicated to you? my curiosity builds.

dedication

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

my friend chris wrote it 'for me' after i sent her a postcard from 'home' a few years ago. i think it was the year i was moving from tx to mi and life had suddenly acquired a much brighter hue. i wrote to her that "things would be alright."

http://www.uta.edu/english/znines03/p24.htm

yyeeaahh!!

[hambokins.livejournal.com]

that is f**king sweet

Re: yyeeaahh!!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ty, n!

[paperkingdoms]

::smiles:: So much fun!