Planting the Hyacinth Bean Vines

Touch: The Journal of Healing

by Kenneth Salzmann

Planting the hyacinth bean vines today

in compost it took us all season to make

from the insistent decay of daily lives rich

in unread newspapers, orange rinds,

eggshells, the cores of apples,

compliant twigs, fallen leaves,

one of us might have thought to say:

“Once, we had ample time

to neglect a garden.”

+ previously published in Memoir (and) Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010

Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet who lives in Woodstock, NY, and Ajijic, Mexico. His poetry has appeared in Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude, Rattle, The New Verse News, Section 8, and elsewhere.