Lest we forget

 We’ve been fussing and fuming about the weather, especially the recurring snow. Turns out, we seem to have a slight memory issue. We’ve forgotten just how bad it can get. ‘Nuff said:

April 17, 2014

Photo by J. Harrington

At least with the weather we’ve been having, I’m not faced with the frustrations of trying to make compost out of garbage. That comes when the weather warms up more than we’ve seen. Maybe around July or August. Jane Kenyon seems to have shared some of my frustrations. As much as misery may love company, it often just means more teeth grinding because more folks are frustrated. What’s even more amusing, if this were late October and I wanted to go duck hunting, the weather would be ideal for that, but too often during duck season we get spells of “bluebird weather.” Each season offers trials, tribulations and triumphs. It’s up to us to decide which is which.

Potato

Jane Kenyon - 1947-1995

In haste one evening while making dinner
I threw away a potato that was spoiled
on one end. The rest would have been

redeemable. In the yellow garbage pail
it became the consort of coffee grounds,
banana skins, carrot peelings.
I pitched it onto the compost
where steaming scraps and leaves
return, like bodies over time, to earth.

When I flipped the fetid layers with a hay
fork to air the pile, the potato turned up
unfailingly, as if to revile me—

looking plumper, firmer, resurrected
instead of disassembling. It seemed to grow
until I might have made shepherd’s pie
for a whole hamlet, people who pass the day
dropping trees, pumping gas, pinning
hand-me-down clothes on the line.

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