Community Garden

The bulldozers and jackhammers

blasted the concrete away

clearing it of water, aggregate, cement,

tearing it down to the soil

until it buzzed with reclamation,

smelled of loam and petrichor,

the release of geosmin in the stirring,

ozone expelling with first lightning and rain,

surface bubbles releasing aerosols

like fresh baked bread from the oven

through open kitchen windows.

–

Over the watchful hum of drones

circling overheard the first crop

of the community garden

was tilled and planted in nine wide rows-

beans, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkin,

squash, melons, clover, mint and basil-

drawing only the attention of hornets,

the disinterest of the rain god

that let their tender love dissolve

back to the earth in a pool of rot,

that never allowed a harvesting or tasting.

–

The second crops were planted in five narrow rows:

tomatoes, peanuts, green peppers, sweet peas

and eggplants, offensive to wasps and immune

to the silly whims of an offended deity

that could not flood over their high walls,

their collective pride, red as clotted blood.

They reaped its first beautiful harvest,

thought it tasted of airy summer dreams,

sold it with joy in their farmer’s market

until the first secret taste spit it out

for it was nothing but sawdust and glue.