Harley's Garden

Beauty in Neighboring

His garden is gone, the old rows grown 
over by crabgrass clumps. Only a memory-tuned eye
perceives the outline where

Harley’s prize pumpkins, stalks 
of corn raided by raccoons, beans,
carrots, potatoes, and beets were nurtured.

The whole neighborhood wheeled carts
of grass clippings out back 
for compost piles that fed

roots of plants, or to make 
mulch that kept weeds down and helped 
soil stay moist in the summer sun.

He’d give you a tour, talk 
with his pronounced Norwegian accent, you needed
to listen well to words, and his excitement 

over I-V drips that fed the young 
vines of baby monsters, pumpkins
so large you couldn’t move them 

on your own. Plastic tents protected
blooms and tender foliage. He’d start 
in spring to get them grown by September’s

Spokane Interstate Fair, blue ribbons 
every year. By October he was done
and willing to share

the most massive Jack-O-Lanterns
for our front porch, where his grand
kids came to say,

“Trick or Treat!” and we’d give 
them c…