My Winter Gardens

[This is my contribution to Cafe Writing's February Project poetry option. We were asked to write about gardens, as inspired by the poem you can find over there. Go ahead and look - I'll wait.]



My Winter Gardens

My January garden grows shivers,
self-seeding on the frozen wind
until all my neighbors have them too
and no one wants my extras.

My February garden nurtures icicles,
the transparent taproots longer each day,
though I lose a few, now and then,
when the weather gets too warm.

My March garden's bounty is mud,
a slow-starter, first shallow so that
I slip when crossing the yard, but
later deep enough to swallow boots whole.