J U N E 1 9 9 6
LISTENING TO THE GARDEN
by Brendan GalvinHear Brendan Galvin read this poem (in RealAudio)
(For help, see a note about the audio.)
Look at it this way: under the brass fanfare
of their blossoms, all those zucchinis
are really incipient oompahs.
And the peavine tremolos? Middle C
rubbed out of a rhubarb stalk?
Now you're beginning to hear it: that line
of radishes ostinato, bean paradiddles,
a beefsteak tomato redballing its cadenza.
Aren't the parts of these vegetables---the phloem,
the calyx and carina---names of woodwinds
you'd love to hear, in counterpoint
to the garden's valves and bells?
Remember that morning you drove
into the main street of a town---Colorado Springs,
was it?---on no holiday you could name?
Nevertheless, the high school band was passing,
majorettes in their short, flippant skirts
frilled like the inner linings of lettuce,
and shakos, corn-tassel plumed, remember,
and the frogging on jackets---cucumber vines
scrolled on themselves. The whole garden's
flash and patootle was moving off
toward a snowed-upon peak
down at the end of that street.
Copyright © 1996 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; June 1996; Listening to the Garden; Volume 277, No. 6; page 86.
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