Mrs. Compost

Never once mowed by me,
our front yard consisted of two
tiny patches of grass between the sidewalk
and the street, a two-car driveway,
and gardens loosely held in place by
termite eaten, cat-clawed two by eights.
Within those walls Momma gave birth
to a small army of potatoes, mint leaves,
lettuce heads, sunflowers, eggplants and
cabbages.  Our back yard was a veritable
jungle, a tangled mess of flowers, weeds,
and herbs, with once every several years,
little bananas, strangely edible.

Working in the yard, pulling weeds,
planting rhodadendrums, mom and dad
found the twelve pack of Budweiser
my friend and I drank the night before.
Sitting in the back yard in big wooden chairs
talking about good looking teachers.  After that,
mom started to refer to David as Mr. Budweiser
and then, getting caught again several years later
with a six pack of Corona, as Se–or Cerveza.

One night and then another, years later,
momma told Austin and I, somewhere
in the reflective hours of the evening,
"when i die, as it would serve me well
bury me in a coffin not so tight
of wood not so strong, so the worms can crawl 
in and eat my lifeless body."
By leaving her not in a human-sized box,
but spread through the sticky dirt
of Texas itself, resting in the strange
intestines of decomposing animals,
we might serve her well.

For a while my brother and I had our own section
of the garden to till, plant, and nurture.
Mrs. Compost helped me plant a crop of sunflowers
eventually yielding three enormous yellow flowers.
They grew and grew, and beneath this sun,
we planted okra, okra so beautiful,
once mom cut, battered, and fried our very own
little green children.

All the sunflowers were dead or dying, black
and grey, on a Television show I recently saw
with a nun turning over the works of Van
Gogh, thousands of them, leaning towards
hell, waiting to be crumbled by the wind
and eaten by the worm, to help birth
the inspiration for next year's painter.

©1997, jay blazek crossley

homefritzlonelyshattered mirrorsa sonnetuntitledThursdayCleanMrs. CompostTraveling AgainA note

To Reach the Questions, Comments, and Complaints Department: jcrossley@mail.utexas.edu