Two Poems & Two Haiku by Steve Deutsch

 

Bedding

 

It is long past time

to put my garden to bed.

 

Even plants that have

survived two hard frosts

 

look like patients 

on life support. 

 

Each year in the first flush

of spring—when I’m digging

 

in the just thawed earth

wearing a ski coat

 

and last year’s gloves,

I promise myself

 

that I will put this garden

to bed properly —

 

trimming here and there

and yanking dead stuff 

 

out by their roots

in the dimming daylight

 

of an icy November.

I never do.

 

It’s hard to believe

that there is just

 

one of me,

springing from bed

 

early each April morning

to plant little green nubs

 

in the clay soil

with so much

 

unsupported optimism.

To someone

 

who can hardly

look out the window

 

at the limp sadsacks

of the garden remains.

 

Ah, only six months

till spring.

 

 

The Arts

 

And, over time

I began to think

of the bench

 

as mine.

It sits grey-green

at the edge

 

of Spring Creek,

in a small park

rarely peopled during the week.

 

Weeping Willows

temper the sun

and tame the winds.

 

Last night

the temperature dropped

thirty degrees

 

and in the early morning

my bench sparkles

with hoar frost.

 

The park —

my poetry,

The creek —

 

my music,

and the willows—

my art.

 

Two Haiku

Last day of Autumn

our path strewn with oak leaves

are you coming home?

 

 

early morning snow

deer tracks through the apple grove

my fireplace crackles

Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and was the first poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. He has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes multiple times. He has six volumes of Poetry. One, Brooklyn won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.