Sometimes

this is what you'll come to, picking about
in earth, pulling morning glory roots
like long white worms and heaping them
beside you of a morning: you will become
distant and glum, and as your wrists dry up,
caked in clay, you'll look around you, and
not your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your oak and ash,
your three brave maples rattling in the breeze,
your small house bracketed in lilacs, breathing smoke,
your woodshed stacked roof-high,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,
your geese, your ducks, your pear trees in bright bloom
will rid you of the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.
Assuming the sun will come out, which now
it does, things won't seem quite that bad,
and yet you will walk stooped, with furrowed
brow, into the house for a late cold lunch
without words, for there are no words
to share what it was the cold ground
said to your hands just now.