Uncertainties

Best Beloveds are again in difficulties. Difficulties abound, it seems.

As do beans. It is that season–the beans have come on mighty sudden. Bounty presents its own challenges, but there’s joy riding along like a kite above it. And when I meditate on things, I realize that all times are “uncertain times,” a phrase bandied about so often these days as to render it a meaningless cliché.[image error]

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Herewith, a very early draft of a new poem, one on which I will need to work (revising…) for some time to come. But it’s a start.

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Hypothesis

Garden teaches a comfort with uncertainty,

knowing that I cannot know, each plan a guess.

From a clear day, hail spewing.

Tree fall on a windless afternoon.

Influx of virus or insects, invasion

of the burrowing vole. I’m never sure

what to believe, or whom–

each seed, each season a test of my hypothesis,

the hypothesis of the garden,

on which nothing at present depends.

We won’t starve. I can purchase food, certainly,

although the garden demonstrates

how rapidly such certainties may change.

Maybe tomorrow, no oranges, no flour,

no disinfectant soap. We live without guarantees

despite the product labels’ promises.

This year the pear tree bears no fruit:

few bees? late frost? Does it want a reason?

Yet I quiver with my need to know.

Knowing, old as I am, uncertainty means change.

Comfort? That requires a trust not at odds

with what’s ambiguous. I weave for myself

a hammock of my unanswered questions,

settle into it, become seed pod, chrysalis, womb.

I place my trust in change.

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