Novel Garden: Swiss Chard

Hello Friends,

I’ve been following the direction of a favorite poet, Jack Ridl, doing this thing where I try to sit in my novel garden (so called for the novel I will never write) and simply notice things, simply “see” the small world of my raised beds with their baby vegetables. Then I just say the “poem” that rises. These are not great poems, not even drafted; they are spoken word pieces with no revision (gasp, what am I saying?), observational and celebratory, poems too wet to pick up or put down. Praise poems if you will. Or Insta-poems–no, that’s too much like dehydrated oatmeal. Flash-light poems? In-the-moment poems? Here’s one from last evening, just at dusk.