Family Gardens
Jack Snyder Three generations of grown men— Grandfather, father, grandson— Survey, through glass, the winter-beaten gardens: Each year’s drab wintry veil uncovers little— A single weathered wheelbarrow Stranded, waiting for spring. Neither snow nor ice can fully erase The tireless wheelbarrow’s ruts Cut so deeply by last spring’s toil Into last spring’s soil— Not simply any man’s Scratch of earth, But dense, proud Pennsylvania clay— A soil racked by its infertile pedigree. So, like seasonal clockwork, Like putting her babe to bed Each winter with such barrenness— Preserving only a shadowy, surgical sterility— Mother Earth reneges on promises of plenty, Sapping our hard dirt-work of its Tangible redress, rich in merit. Self-blinded with pastoral vanity— A mock-bucolic sensibility— We perpetuate her plotted precision, Inventing delight in the comforts of form. Scrap cedar stakes strangled by plumb line, Holding hemmed—so tense and taut— The strict stamps and parcels of impotent earth; Chalking out sharp right angles; Defining the mattock’s path with cold geometry. 45