Seed Packet

Hear the author read this poem (in RealAudio)

In three months' time it will seem
as though you bought
a 99-cent ticket to the Big Top:
a small green vehicle with orange
circus hubcaps will appear
in your garden, and send out of
every exit pattypans
yellow and green, clearing your fence
in their ruffs
and frills, and still more
clowns of the vegetable kingdom
will brave thistles in striped, edible hats
with marigolds dangling
here and there for keeping bugs away,
the whole troupe freckled
variously and sniffing the day lilies
with zucchini beezers and golden honkers,
not a nose in sight, but impossible blue
hubbard shoes fleeing up the paths
on their lifelines.