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Time For Some Gardening
It was time for some gardening. He heard a train go by.
Its distant airhorn sighed. There were no clouds up in the sky.
He trimmed the grass beside the craggy boulders at the edge.
He dipped his shoulders, reaching down. He heard a passing jet.
He did some weeding near the hedges; he pulled up and cut.
The dull roar of the freeway traffic—the whoosh of car and truck.
Utility poles, silver gray—black wires, in between,
with birds—rose over roof tops, trees and streets, in that apt scene.
A dry leaf took off down the sidewalk past the flapping flags.
The staid lamp-posts stood stony-still. What is the price of gas?
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Bruce Dale Wise is a poet and former English teacher currently residing in Texas.
Interesting contemplations while gardening intrinsically inhaling the sensory sound around and then the intrusion of a very different thought at the end. Delightful.
Although I usually take Mr. Peterson’s overly effusive observations with a grain of salt, I do think this is an area where our foci coincide “intrinsically inhaling the sensory sound around”, unlike, those, of say, mine and Mr. Anderson’s.
I must admit to not being able to make observations on all the prose or poems I have recently come in contact with, as I nearly always read well over 10,000 words a week and write well over 1,000 words a week—perhaps a flaw that may also have been cast against Mr. Peterson.
However, I am thankful to be given a chance here to say that his is one of the most memorable poems [for me] @SCP this year, that is, his trochaic, Wordsworthian “I Have Waited For September”, where his diction is as superb as that in Guy Graybill’s surprising “The British Museum”.
I almost don’t know what to make of this, but I’m pretty sure that nothing should be made of it. It’s sheer gas.
As I have mentioned previously I am pursuing a prosaic prosody, in the manner of many PostModernists; that is one strike against my poetry @ SCP. Like many PostModernists, I too am interested in nonfiction, hence the recording of details as they happen in the poem: from hearing the train, seeing the passing jet, hearing the freeway traffic beyond, and observing the elements of the neighbourhood. Like writers of the Movement, such as Larkin, I too, at times, am interested in a minimalistic tone and attitude. The key to this poem relies on its contrasts, from movement to the staid in the conjunction of life and machine. Hence, at the end, the dead-panned question, which is a very ordinary one these days, is a technique that comes straight out of Bishop, the only teacher who crystalized my views on Modernist poetry, before she died in 1979.
Some gardening gets done by the gardener whose attention is drawn to motor sounds and utility sights. Then the motion of the dry leaf seems to take his motorized thought out of the scene to the abstract banal question of the price of gas. It’s a progression, Bruce, perhaps poking fun at garden meditation.
…not at all.
Thank you, Bruce. I read this as the narrator trying to tune out the confusion and noise of the world and cultivate his own garden, as Voltaire says, but it’s hard to do as seen in the last sentence.
Mr. Mantyk’s observations are definitely the closest to what I was attempting. I was purposefully countering Voltaire’s observation with a NewMillennial one. For anyone who may be interested, here is the original poem:
Time For Some Gardening
Caleb Wuri Seed
It was time for some gardening. He heard a train go by.
Its distant airhorn sighed. There were no clouds up in the sky.
He trimmed the grass beside the craggy boulders at the edge.
He dipped his shoulders, reaching down. He heard a passing jet.
He did…some weeding near the hedges…he pulled up and cut.
The dull roar of the freeway traffic—th’ whoosh of car and truck.
Utility poles, silver gray—black wires, in between,
with birds—rose over roof tops, trees and streets, in that apt scene.
A dry leaf took off down the sidewalk past the flapping flags.
The staid lamp-posts stood stony-still. What is the price of gas?
Caleb Wuri Seed is a poet of natural farming, who prefers grass-fed and grass-finished meat and milk products, along with low-mercury fish and but a few organic fruits and vegetables, like avocados, olives, tomatoes, sauerkraut, and mushrooms.
Very nice.
Thanks for the succinct judgment.
In reference to the brief tennos “Time For Some Gardening”, one of things that most amazes me about living in the Metroplex is how different working in the yard is. In Washington state we could not get through a summer without the deer eating up our rose bushes; but here in Texas, the rose bushes we are growing are going through their fourth major flourishing. Here the flowers are thriving in the Sun, better than they have all season; and it is October, when, where I lived, the rains would dominate the landscape.