David Beebe

El Jardinero


He kneels closer to his work, ninety-two in the shade,
cigarette dangling from his mouth as smoke mixes into
his stringy, black hair with a little gray like the weathered
back of a cattle dog. Ash drops onto the ovate hosta leaf
and he brushes it away with his thumb. The air, thick as
bathwater, chases the last of the bruised rainclouds that
had briefly paused his work, beads of moisture ornamental
on the lenses of his glasses. He reaches his hands into
wet earth and pulls toward his body like a lucky hand of poker.
He digs and digs and I know his mind is elsewhere.
He stops and looks at the hole, there on his knees.
He returns the dirt inside and lays the base of a new gardenia
bush and I wonder where he had gone the moment before.

David Beebe

Daylight savings time


I fell from the treehouse
as the adults talked in the kitchen.
I stared up at the tree that betrayed me,
past the leaves and branches at the moon
in early evening, nestled close like a piece
of fruit, wondering if the tree would let
the moon tumble too.

Sitting here now I smell sweet redbud
on the tail end of a western prairie fire,
rows of Bradford pear looking like winter
now more than three months ago. A county
burn ban keeps us from collecting kindling
and raking sanguine coals, over and over again.

A mourning dove rests at the edge
of the roof as I start to shiver in the shade –
the shadow swallowing the new grass of the
courtyard. Her song asks for warmer days
and spring showers and I tell her the rain
will keep coming till the rain gets it right.