My garden teems with cucumbers, roses’ droop, heavily scented figs.
My floppy bag sufficient to fit all the harvest:
in it I also gather eggshells discarded by chicks.
I lay your boots and spade neatly to rest inside the shed.
Played the gardener enough for today – this week – this month.
So easy to forget in today’s sun-stillness:
those moments I flare in nervous thrall –
when is the shift to sandstorm season?
It’s there in the echo of last cuckoo-call.
Musing about the change of seasons with a little help from Sappho tonight. Please join us over at dVerse Poets Pub, where we are celebrating that wonderful free-forming, room-for-all event that is Open Link Night.
findingtimetowrite 
Marina Sofia – I love autumn. In fact I think it’s the season I like best. Such a reflective time, and so clear how much natural goodness there is in the earth at harvest time. Perhaps I’m gushing a bit, but I love that feeling and your poem captures it.
What a bountiful harvest you have described. It is always good to have the time during autumn to gather what has grown.
Fall is my favorite season too, because of its colorful beauty and the crisper air. It seems you live in the country, MarinaSofia, and that you have been blessed with a bountiful harvest I hope you will enjoy.
I do live in the countryside, but sadly that is not my own garden harvest I am describing… only wish it were…
The vision of a woman with her apron full of fresh grown organic food is what carried me here…some old paintings depict the scene you describe and your poem is a perfect fit…and egg shells for composting 😉 Lovely
That’s the image I should have used, but couldn’t find something suitable that was not copyrighted.
oh i love figs… wish i had some in my garden… i always find that garden work is so soothing for the soul… and it’s good to forget about the storms of life for a bit
Nope, none here in this garden, but there were some in Sappho’s poem – and of course in the garden of my in-laws’ house in Greece…
How lovely and fresh that garden must smell and so green! Waiting for the changing season can at once seem quick but a little bit of a wait..I always find I miss the last one when the next one comes…lovely poem
Oh, me too – love something about each season, but then forget what it is when it drags on…
Ahh..to forget the moments of nervous thrall..truly there was a time where in the Summer my most favorite time..is escaping the prison of work and home..to mow my grass..there was something calling..but not the mower…
the leaves of grass….:)
call me home..and talk to me..
once again….
I do wonder whose boots & spade you borrowed, & what bounty you gathered as the anticipation of an ending to the moment mushroomed. The “sandstorm season” threw me a bit, expecting the piling up of snow, the blue sheen of ice. A marvelous feel to the piece, & obviously even with a re-read, a metaphor for something deeper, between the lines.
It originally started as a straightforward gardening piece and then something strange crept in… thanks for noticing. Sandstorm is from Sappho, here in Geneva region it would certainly be more blizzards that we’d be expecting!
We sit on the knife-edge of weather here in Texas too. I grew up in the Texas Panhandle. Spring brought the great sandstorms usually and they were brutal, beating, and relentless. Our parents who had endured the “dust-bowl” had no patience with our pleas to stay home from school. When rain comes, it comes with hail, lightning, thunder-bolts which can be terrifying – flash floods that erode the op soil and never nourish the soil beneath. Over in minutes with sometimes dire consequences. You brought that all back with your fine and well -crafted poem. Thank you.
I was in Beijing when they had a sandstorm from the Kalahari – a frightening experience. And I can imagine (having read about the dust-bowl) how extreme and terrifying such a lifestyle must be.
I love this harvest and the laying down of tools–that moment of completion
I would love to walk and sit in the garden and be enthralled with the scent and last cuckoo call ~
Beautiful final line – gorgeous poem
we all dream of that garden where we can harvest our lives.. the autumn bliss, but are we ready to do the needed work of spring?….
You conjure a strong picture here Marina…
Ooh, this is just gorgeous, I know those feelings, every one. I spent the afternoon in this very place. Love.
Nice. I like the dreamy feel of this, the resistance and acceptance that seasons are changing. Lovely.
Well, trying to accept – my real me is still battling, still in denial!
enjoy the garden while you can…the seasons will change soon enough…when we lose ourselves a bit in the peace of the moment we forget that the seasons will change soon enough…not sure if that is a bad thing though…for the moment…smiles.
i feel the end-of-season here for the gardener… one myself… attention seems to shift… you showed us that in the end
Down tools to await for the new season. There are so much anticipation and thrills in store that one just cannot wait! Great lines Marina!
Hank
This is truly lovely. I’ve downed my tools and am restless.
To me sandstorm season is spring, so it conjured a different image, but I love the three lines nonetheless: So easy to forget in today’s sun-stillness: / those moments I flare in nervous thrall – / when is the shift to sandstorm season?
This was written based on the remnants of a text by Sappho. The cucumbers and the sandstorm are all her own creation, so I had to work with that. Not many sandstorms around Lac Leman, I can assure you!
Seasonal changes as inspiration expectation and dread. Well done.
I think autumn is my favourite season despite being followed by my least favourite. Love the way your poem sums up a bountiful harvest.
I didn’t get the association with Sappho right away (I thought you were talking about someone in our online poetry tribe who used that handle). Then I thought it might me about a woman who was handling the ecstasies of home while a partner was off at war. Or simply that the speaker worked in a region ravaged by the harsher realities of global warming. Maybe all of that. The dust is Sappho’s poem, perhaps, the storm in its ongoing imagination, this poem. There is such sweet delicacy and a prescience of darkness ahead.
Thank you, Brendan. Yes, this was an exercise on the fragments found in Sappho’s poems – a sort of ‘fill in the gaps’. I’ve been thinking it might be quite useful to do that (to limber up) with other contemporary poems – just blank out certain lines, leave maybe 1-2 words per line or even less, and have to make up the rest.
This is excellent Marina, that thought of the season ending and the next one beginning is always filled with with trepidation at the possible extremes we might encounter, in my case the heat of summer. Very well done.
Sounds like gorgeous countryside 🙂
Lovely garden , would love to have such a garden!!
So would I! Sadly, I am the world’s worst gardener, so I just have a lawn, some wildish roses, a few random bushes and some wild meadow flowers…
Well I am pleased I don’t have a city garden. So much work …mine is pot plants on a small balcony…tat’s enough….would rather spend the time sailing on the harbour when I am in the city….which I did today….magnificent!
I’ve always wanted a beautiful garden, but am better at looking and admiring other people’s than growing my own… sadly…
I just came in from my garden, having pulled the last of the squash, pumpkin, bean vines in preparation for compost and new seed. This made me smile as I feel the connection we gardeners have around the globe.
Now that I am good at: harvesting. Not so much at the planting, weeding and other gardening jobs. But I do admire those who are keen gardeners!
that gritty shift in the penultimate line – bracing, unexpected – brings this pen into relief, Marina ~
I think Autumn must be the poet’s season. 🙂 Great poem.
“So easy to forget in today’s sun-stillness:”
I too love the time I can spend in the garden. I get lost in the work and time just seems to fly by. Beautiful seasonal capture!
the “boots and spade” put back to rest makes me wonder at the stories past. A lovely moment of saying goodbye to a season. You asked about my “Sapphire” poem – the meaning of “arch over wandering days with amethyst in my pocket”… The archer, fire, and the stone amethyst represent Sagittarius. 🙂
Ah, that makes sense now! Apologise for my ignorance and thanks for stopping by!
Lovely imagery! Unfortunately or fortunately (if one is thinking of the plants) I have no outside space. However, I think of my entire village as my garden. Instead of a green thumb, I have two and they are BLACK! Yet, I do appreciate the skills of those who can work miracles in the soil.