Garden ~ April, 2020

By Arlene Iris Distler

Tugging at weeds on my knees

the daylily bed, soil level,

about to aim my trowel

at a clump of pointed spears

cradle of gold and pink

trumpets-to-be,

when a toad, cameoed to the hilt

wearing a knobby tilth of dark ochre

leaped into sight. “Oh!” I exhaled,

then admiring words

flowed at the fellow

now still as a clay garden figure.

Grateful my trowel had missed him,

grateful for this life

at my feet.

Arlene Distler is a writer and poet based in southern Vermont. After a decade of going “back to the land” in the town of Readsboro, she now lives and works in the relative metropolis of Brattleboro. In 2014 Finishing Line Press published her first collection, a chapbook titled “Voices Like Wind Chimes.” Her first full-length collection, “This Earth, This Body” was a finalist in the Sundog Poetry Center’s book contest in 2020. She is co-founder of the non-profit organization Write Action, a networking and advocacy organization for writers in the southern Vermont and tri-state region.

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This poem sings of spring without mentioning spring; it brings us deeply and quickly into our senses, into the daylily bed and surround of flowers yet to be. We feel the sensation of trowel in hand, the pressure of knees against earth — we couldn’t get much closer. We’re steeped in a world we’re familiar with, that of the planted garden, but also in this other land of toad with his other worldly “knobby tilth.”

The poem starts in one place and ends up in another. We move from the domestic act of weeding and tending, to be brought more deeply into the nonhuman realm of animals, plants, and soil. The poem illustrates how quickly that can happen and how much a shift in awareness can expand our experience away from ourselves to those of other living beings who we tend to not always pay attention to. I love the shift that happens in the speaker and the resulting change of focus, mindset, and heart.

When I first heard this poem read during an online event I was part of, I interpreted the last line — Grateful my trowel had missed him/grateful for this life/at my feet — as someone awakening to gratitude for one’s own life. But when I was later able to read the poem in print, I realized this line might refer more to the frog’s life and not the speaker’s. And now when I read it yet again, I feel it even differently — as a larger statement of awakening and gratitude. “Grateful to the life at my feet.” Yes, the frog. Yes, my human body. All of life everywhere. A good way to begin this spring we have all been gifted with.

Susan Jefts is a poet and educator who lives in the Adirondacks and Ripton. She has recently completed her first full-length book of poetry, “Breathing Lessons,” and runs workshops using poetry as a way to explore life transitions and directions, and our relationships with nature.