He held the green, plastic handle,
That curved and flowed to fit his fingers
And carried it to the driveway,
A plain of mud with tiny streams of water
Flowing through.

He drew its blade across the muck, cutting deep
A trench to let the water run,
And be dammed and caught,
And roll aside the mud and flow again,
Futile pleasure.

          Two freezes after the flowing mud,
In a little green tent beaten by the rain,
His father caught up the spade, and drew his own
Trench to turn the flood and keep their sleep dry,
Never failing.

          A child who first went to school
And took a pumpkin blown round like glass,
And tomatoes tiny as he, plucked from the brown,
And a long, long, long green one that twisted,
All alive.

The red orbs, curving like an infant's face, eyes
The long green jutting out to sniff the dully
Sweet air, peeking through the firm green skin,
Pumpkin flesh, clean and strong,
Solid light.

But the vegetable man who won a ribbon,
For his gawking tomato eyes and bent nose
And rosy checks, left too long in the sun,
Turned soft and white like spider web,
Falling in.

The father took the spade,
And made a little grave for him,
And when the sick-sweet air from him
Was gone, they lifted the spade up, up
A cross.

          A boy who saw that children rot,
Took the spade and bent to hunt for rocks
In the grainy earth, and made a man of stone,
Strong enough to sit in the sun and stop the wind,
Never rotting.

A boy who didn't want to dig another grave
Never stopped piling stones on stones,
Making jigsaw faces with a granite jumble,
Until he saw that they were silent rocks,
Never living.

Copyright 2004 by Isaac Wheeler