Garden Metamorphosis
By Smoky Zeidel
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About this ebook
In the midst of a confusing and frightening world, Smoky Zeidel remains true to form with her poetry, gently reminding us to close out the superfluous and remember that which is sacred. Garden Metamorphosis is both a love song to Mother Earth, and a celebration of the cycle of life.
In “Dirt,” Zeidel wishes us “More dirt paths through forest, meadow, and desert,/pine needles and humus and sand sticking to your feet.” In “Hawk Dance,” she shares with us a spiritual moment: “Oh hawks, if I had wings! I hear your music’s secret score,/I start to dance, and dance into the night.” And in “The Big Picture,” her silent prayer is a benediction for all of us: “Slay me with a sunset numinous/ whose colors have no names./Let me see the big picture,/live a macro life,/before my days are over and/my bones reduced to dust.”
Read the complete poems, plus Zeidel’s short story, “Transformed.”
Smoky Zeidel
Smoky Zeidel is a poet and novelist whose love of the natural world is thematic in all she writes. She taught writing and creativity workshops for many years at venues throughout the Midwest before succumbing to her bohemian urges and moving to Southern California. Her work has earned her two nominations for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. Smoky lives in a ramshackle cottage in the hills outside Los Angeles with her husband Scott and a plethora of animals, both domestic and wild.
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Garden Metamorphosis - Smoky Zeidel
Garden Metamorphosis
––––––––
Smoky Zeidel
Copyright 2018 by Smoky Zeidel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, with the exception of brief quotations in a review.
This story is a work of fiction. While some of the historical references may be real, characters and incidents within the book are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC
USA
For the monarch caterpillars
that choose to grace my yard
each winter,
and
For the Guitar Man.
Table of Contents
Poem
The Butterfly Effect
Sacred Soil
The Guitar Man
The Guitar Man, #2
Dirt
Desert Rain
Fish Kisses
My Father's Trains
The Birdwatcher
Garden Metamorphosis
The Golden Rule
Hawk Dance
How to Read a River
Of What Would a Garden Dream
Sanctus
Wind
Sleeping Beauty
Sometimes I Think I Am Like Water
Magic
Wait
Solstice
Now
The Big Picture
Do Not Go Meekly Into Troubled Days*
Bonus Content: Transformed: A Short Story by Smoky Zeidel
About the Author
More Books by Smoky Zeidel:
Poem
[poh-uh m]
noun
––––––––
Words
weaving a mosaic,
dancing across the page,
singing.
The Butterfly Effect
––––––––
The monarch butterfly doesn't care
who was elected president,
if a wall is built,
that Leonard Cohen is dead.
Walls and oligarchs mean nothing to her,
she can't miss music she doesn't hear.
Instead she's focused on laying her eggs
on the milkweed plants growing in my garden
Before taking to the air,
heading south to Mexico.
Sacred Soil
––––––––
This is what good garden soil is made from:
dead leaves and apple peelings,
eggshells and coffee grounds,
wilted spinach, carrot tops and potato skins,
detritus amassed in the course of our days,
the rotting remains of what once was alive.
If life is sacred, then food is holy,
the decayed earth in which it grows, hallowed.
My garden’s my church,
sacred ground from which miracles spring—
beet greens and broccoli,
Brussels sprouts, kale,
lettuce and corn and beans.
I once knew a woman afraid of the earth.
She ate only broth made from cabbage and herbs,
what grew above the decayed soil,
the rot.
How ironic her body now lies in that soil
which crippled her in life.
She never stepped barefoot into the loam,
splashed in puddles or baked mud pies.
As for me, while I live I will
bury my naked toes deep in the soil,
cavort with the earthworms,
celebrate decay.
Then, when I die,
bury my ashes in a garden somewhere,
and plant a tomato or orange tree
as my grave marker.
Allow me to rot,
to become sacred soil,
complete my life’s circle,
and nourish new growth.
The Guitar Man
––––––––
The love affair started when he was a kid,
because his sister wanted to