At Adams Farm

you spend your days
among the eggplants and buttercup squash,

black earth beneath your fingernails, genuflect 
on a green Walmart kneeler, weeding

snap peas and tomatillos, deacon zinnias
and nasturtiums attracting aphids and squash bugs

away from the cucurbits, bright cosmos and sunflowers
welcoming butterflies and billy bees,

bird netting carefully shrouding plumped 
strawberries. All is as it should be: rows and rows

of seated parishioners, honest herbs and sweet succulents,
colorful immigrants such as bok choy and Asian red beans,

babels of languages, buzzings and chirpings of the choir
of red-winged blackbirds nesting in the high grass 

outside the garden fence, along with the coloraturas
of tree swallows warbling in the branches above.

I ask if you believe in God. You reply each night 
I go home tired as hell but with this feeling 

of satisfaction. For a moment I wonder
if you heard the question, but then I realize you did.



(First published in Front Porch Review - 2021)