Hell Has Frozen Over: My Local Garden

(Image compliments of boys life)

This is something I wrote a few months ago as I watched two men garden in the little pea patch that sprouted up this year a block from my house. I read it this morning and felt hope that spring is really only a (baker's) dozen weeks away.

Men in glasses
Orange and black
Soothe their snapping peas, question infestations
Soak up the energy of their sun-spotted soil
Salvage strawberry starts

Men in khakis
Bleached and crisp
Head to bed early just wake at six a.m. to coax
Walla walla sweets into crackling brown bags
Laid gently, forever, to rest

“Organic?”
“Flowering?”
“Can I look?”
Wired minds burrowing into nature
Like pastors into Big-Booked doctrine
Ready to fry ‘em up in bacon grease
As hell cools and freezes over.