Swamp Lives by LEE ROSSI

In the spring the weathered rituals.

Complaints about the lack of rain.

Complaints about the rain.

Trips to the hardware store for seeds

and onion and garlic sets.

Frequent trips out of the corner of the yard

to turn the mulch or burn leaves.

Complaints about the gumballs

raining like comets from the sweetgum trees.

March was a misery of gray,

the chilly water turning the orange grass

into a swamp.

He’d be out at his backyard plot

hacking the soil with his pitchfork

chipping all the recalcitrant clods

as if they were the pride of impenitent souls

and he the devil.

He had the soil in him

ever since they’d sent him upriver

at age 13 to work in a restaurant

as a busboy, a waiter, a bartender,

the head man. 45 years on his feet

riding the duckboards

while the lemon peel, orange rinds,

and peanuts huddled on the secret floor.

He’d never made his peace with the soil.

The red clay of Tennessee was filled with his

dagoes

and the wine of their impermanence

bloomed in muggy gnat-filled evenings

along thick scrub creeks,

fireflies their only constellation.

Nothing in the pale blue soils of the suburbs

to console him,

not the pale blue wife or kids

just his gaelic,

a crown of whips 6 feet tall

with giant 4-inch bulbs,

and onions, thick and woody,

tasting of mulch and larva

and the child he’d never be.

From “The Jacaranda Review, Vol. VI, Nos. 1&2” (Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles: $5.; 176 pp.). Lee Rossi is the editor of Tsunami, and a contributing editor of ONTHEBUS.

Copyright 1992 by Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.