Leftover cedar
logs from the house
twenty-five years ago
paid for
frame a loamy mix
of decomposing granite and clay
with horse manure
stirred and piled
fine as sand
three years fluffed
with the skid steer
and fill what could be
a feeder along the fence—
a sixty-foot trough
for bare root raspberries
blackberries
border of red onions
come summer
and it not yet spring.
Like finches building nests
we enlarge the garden
in two half-days,
tend to instincts
warm air brings
and flesh demands
like plowing fingers
in fresh-worked dirt.
We lift another glass
and see colored fruit
years from here
paid-for.
drycrikjournal 
A man after my own heart . . .
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Thanks, Peter.
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Paid for? Enjoyed reading your poetry. What happened to freebies.
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The reward of investing time to make leftovers useful is economic, but to enjoy the satisfaction and a vision that lasts longer than the short rush of what money can buy, cost essentially nothing, now that’s a coup. The crop’s not in yet. It’ll take at least two years of tending attention before we see enough berries to make jam, but the heavy work is done that I may not have the energy for two years hence–paid for.
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I see. Two years just about right to get a bumper crop of berries. Onions and garlic and other seeds to plant in between might ease the pain of waiting. No energy need except sun and water and your TLC. Now I wait to see your crop – paid for.
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Beautiful. Looking forward to what grows from here.
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Me, too–see how close it comes to what I envision.
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“plowing fingers in fresh-worked dirt”, Like seeing a fawn hidden in the grass, listening to a brook on it’s way to the sea, the sound of coyotes in the still of the night, you must plunge hands into the dirt, to know the purity of mother earth.
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…the old flesh.
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We’ve been digging around in the garden lately as well. I don’t know how we’ll keep it all watered this year but spring just isn’t spring without planting something somewhere.
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Nice bit of green for ‘not yet spring’ but is that a statue of an old cowboy over by the big rock?
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Paid for with sweat, determination, a love of the land and appreciation of good food. We, too, have many 25-year projects calling.
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