Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Last year, some friends and I walked my neighborhood’s garden tour. We marveled at lush beds of salvia, pathways of gardenia, rose covered terraces, all of it inspiring but grossly deceptive. I thought, I can do this. I do not have a green thumb to speak of. Still, I went wild in a nursery. I placed whatever was colorful into my cart: coneflowers, hydrangea, lavender, longwood blue.

At first, not much happened. Several plantings withered. The bee balm got waylaid by powdery mildew. I didn’t even know what powdery mildew was until after this letdown. These beautiful stalks of red spiky flowers that belonged on the set of Jurassic Park suddenly dropped in bunches. I tried to rescue them with stakes and string. But no doing; they just flopped. My garden has little shade; all of it took a beating from the summer heat. I had little knowledge of garden zones, deadheading, or even the benefits of watering at night versus watering in the morning. It’s clear that I am a beginner. But I am learning, and the bees are now coming to the garden.

People often ask me: can poetry be taught? As if there is a playbook for writing poetry, guidelines, and steps. I believe writing poetry, like gardening, is a gradual accumulation of instinctive habits: observing, tending, and nourishing one’s talent and imagination. Today’s poem sees the garden as a barometer of our changing climate and of our inner lives.

March, The Garden
by Chera Hammons

This year, because we didn’t have the usual winter cold, 
our flowerbeds didn’t die all the way back. 

It’s not like every other spring, when the butterfly bush
has to grow all the way back up from its roots.

The catmint and lamb’s ear have already spread far past
what we intended, but we aren’t merciless enough to trim them,

and though there has been little rain, the desert willows
leaf out. The bees dance their maps before there is nectar anywhere.

This brief kingdom does not accept much rule. March is still
the harshest month. We grow used to the wind and dust

of spring, the red flag warnings, the burn bans. 
A few weeks ago, from our back window, we could see a plane,

glossy as an early hawk, weaving through the smoke, 
dropping its discouragement on hungry flames

while we talked about whether we should evacuate.
No matter how much rain we get, it’s never enough,

and this year is already hot enough to remind us of another
not long past, when flash fires overtook the cattle as they fled,

so that their charred bodies were left half-melted
standing like art, posed mid-run, cooked and reeking. 

Ever since that year, I have had nightmares that those cattle were us.
The flies are never dormant; the wasps are out in February.

The Jupiter’s Beard already looks the same way it did last July.
Sap rises in the ash like a lullaby toward the moon.

Still I am surprised by myself, how I hesitate.

"March, the Garden" by Chera Hammons. Used by permission of the poet.