Or, sometimes

you'll come to this, lovingly rooting
in earth, gently setting to one side
fat worms, watching them
sink from sight with shrugs of their nonexistent
shoulders. As your wrists dry up, caked
in clay, you'll look around you, and
your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your ash and oak,
your three unfurling maples whispering in the breeze,
your white house bracketed in lilacs, breathing
smoke, your woodshed stacked with fir,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,
your pears and apples, your geese in their bright plumes
will bring to you the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.
Assuming that the clouds will come, which now
they do, you will take things as they are,
and so you simply walk, with even-tempered
gaze, toward the house for a late cold lunch:
one without words, for there are no words
to share what it was your hands
said to the green earth even now.