Garden shade

Last week
on morning ramble
through my garden sentenced
to mid-summer shade
by the neighbor’s maturing maples
(and, who knows, maybe
also a stray few plantings
of my own doing),
I cursed

the tart blueberries
and the tangy jostas;
the shriveled apples and
the green cherries,
hard to the pits;
the barren gooseberry,
honeyberry,
juneberry,
and gogi;
the toms
and the
peppers and
the basil,
all lagging
and haggard;
a truly ass-puckering harvest
of blue damson;
an exceptionally astringent
batch of aronia.

Only the dour English bounty
of pink and red currants
fulfilling the promissory
of my last decade.

Later that night,
now encamped upon
a wooded ridge high
above the Rockcastle,
halfway through a meal
of oats and water,
I spied a bounty
of two wild
vaccinium.

Pea-size.
Deflated.
With only
a faint claim
to their namesake color.
The couple hung

from a bush that had grown larger
from a nearby arboreal hack job
I had delivered unto
some light-hogging deadfall
(and, who knows, maybe also some
perfectly upright maple saplings).
This act, my hack, took place
some fifteen moons back,
a time when
I might have believed
a little laupered sunlight
and a bland shriveled pair
were two things
other beings
ate.