Raspberries in Love

Dedicated to Gary Snyder

But you my darling spindly whips,

living with onions, preoccupied with clips,

talk day and night about how much

Gary loved you last August. Everyone's heard

about how he ate you off the pie plate,

with a spatula.

There’s no time now for vacuous sentimentality.

May is dried up. Celebrity canes, darklings now,

pile by the ditch. The cows are using them for toothpicks.

The wild rose loves it. So does the Great Basin sage,

in the front door. Cold’s colder, hot’s hotter.

The grosbeaks missed their mark.

Will you be happy if I dig up what’s left

of the asparagus so you have room to recuperate?

I know winter was brutal, all that drought,

poplars exploding, frozen goats. I pluck a hair

off your chin and a bell rings. The poppies higher

by a foot, the buttercup burrs up your yin yang.

You say, you say, you’ve seen it all before,

when god or mother earth decide to fix it.

Hurry dears. I’ve read a scientific study

that says run-off from the mountain snowpack

diminishes each year and that sooner, not later,

your patch will evaporate to alkali.