Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian
In summer poet gardeners are led astray by produce.
There will be no ghazals when peppers are plumping in the greenhouse,
no time for tercets when rhubarb is in season, when rhymes are tangled in pea vine.
Weeds fill the notebook, refusing to be shaped into neat couplets. They spread at will, their roots leaving scant space for pantoum.
Haibuns run amok. They choke potatoes with bland adjectives and limp verbs. They must be trimmed, but first, the lanky willows that overshade the onion bed.
Who could pen a sonnet when gilded squash blossoms swell, outshining every leafy green?
What lofty metaphor can equal looking upward into cherries hanging heavy, juiceful, nearly ready?
And, look behind, because the crows are poised for ripeness, too.
There’s no opportunity for poetry. Beans and beets, carrots and garlic are waiting, and not patiently.
Harvest now and glean from them words for tomorrow.
Bonnie Demerjian writes from her island home in Southeast Alaska in the midst the Tongass National Forest on the land of the Lingit Aaní, a place that continually nourishes her writing. Her work has appeared in Alaska Women Speak, Pure Slush, and Blue Heron Review, among others.
