When, before a late spring snow,
my neighbor stood by fence to tell
Even God took a rest,
I pitched the shed doors open
to three tin cans,
a clay pot, and sand bucket,
scooped the lot at my breast,
then knelt to bury them
in red earth.
Now the prickly stems
were sheathed at lawn’s edge.
And given to roots that eat
from cold I shuddered:
if under the pots in my garden
were the pale shanks of olives,
not the flinty buds of berries,
I would unleash their lanky tails
on the silence of men
who have no neighbor
with whom to rest.