Tobi Alfier
Planting Level
When they came to visit, Dad worked
his middle-aged sons hard,
all day. Ninety one years
allowed him this privilege,
a yard the size of a small town
earned him this right.
The boys tilled miles of uneven grass,
dug post holes, strung wire,
flung shit into rows for planting.
Dad went to every nursery in town
for herbs, flowers, tomatoes.
Every jarred spice in the wobbly
kitchen drawer was from decades past.
Can’t make pasta without basil,
so grow it fresh. No marinara
without tomatoes…
and honor your wife with Rose of Sharon
and poppies.
The sons—flecked with dirt
and bloodied calluses,
worn out for the first time
since high school football,
were collapsed in the showers,
water running sweaty,
reviving nothing.
Tools back in their appointed spots,
Dad watched the twilight ravel down
the day in his new garden, camp chair
solid on straight earth, hoarse from shouting orders,
the warm relief of Drambuie on ice.
He took stock of the new plants, the fence line,
the boundary. A nod for a job well done,
for what takes so long to measure.
The Bay from Paseo de Cotobro
I’m tired.
I walk the esplanade
in navy whites,
text my wife that I am well—
she worries enough,
cannot hear the exhaustion
through my fingers.
As it should be.
My eyes trace a ship
bound for Morocco.
I follow it to vanishing,
till it’s the ghost-grey
of a dirty moon.
Three nuns nod as they pass,
enter the whitewashed façade
of a bodega.
Their whispers keep me
entranced, their kind
profundity as they give thanks
for the small morsels
they are about to receive
holds me to the door
in frozen adoration.
The tiredness falls away.
Later tonight I will sleep like
a child after a bedtime story,
the amber wash of streetlights
hallowing my room.
