All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering

brown fence

under a low branch with its rotten old apricots miscellaneous

under the leaves,

fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet;

found a good coffeepot in the vines of the porch, rolled a

big tire out of the scarlet bushes, hid my marijuana;

wet the flowers, playing the sunlit water each to each,

retuning the godly extra drops for the stringbeans and daisies;

three times walked around the grass and sighed absently;

my reward, when the garden fed me its plums from the

form of a small tree in the corner,

am angel thoughtful of my stomach, and my dry and lovelorn

tongue

1956