Two Poems by Leslie LaChance

In the Garden of Benign Neglect


I.  In Which I Confess to Wendell Berry That I Have Shamed Him 

Most nights I couldn’t say about the moon
new, half, crescent, gibbous.  When potatoes?
How eggplant? What flowers to festoon
the patch and keep away the moles?

My gardens fail. I’ll admit and just confess
the many reasonsblight, rabbit, flood, drought
do not exceed plain old laziness
in its means to mock the beds and sprout

chaos, a harvest of spring’s good intentions
gone bad from too much not enough. I should have
sprayed and plucked, given more attention
to the soil.  I could have shown more love

and looked things up. It’s all spoiled now
a weedy mess, though fecund.
I’m no mad farmer wise with know-how.
Still, the bees come, wild blooms beckon.



II. The Roof of the Shed Has Fallen In

Culprits: Rain and carpenter bees,
     tornadic winds, benign neglect or just
neglect – a little houseful
     spills into the yard, mounds up
and stays: glove, tool, brick, plastic
     toy, ladder, brush, those cushions full of rain.


Our accumulation freights
     the glistening day, and I wonder
what the archaeologists would say. What to make
     of this fine, artifactual mess
of all the things
     all the abandonings?


III. On Not Gardening at Noon

Zinnias have overtaken
          the herbs
               tomatoes, a few survivors
                    of brown blight
                                     and bugs

split before our picking
               all the basil has bolted
          crabgrass
               claws 
                    every last patch

I christen you The Garden
                                       of
                                         Benign
                                           Neglect
               and could make of you a metaphor
                                                    for every failure of attention
                                                          for every failure
but on bright August days
          it seems best
and most useful
to learn the names
          of  your butterflies






Day Lies Down on Dingle Hill


When barn swallows and bats come to feed
at dusk and cousins stop their lawn games

to guard their hair, when the tractor
has gone still and the empty silo, the milk-house 

full of trash, the cow-less barn stand brown and white
and abandoned against the gloaming, when 

day lies down on Dingle Hill, wraps up 
all the little ghosts and streams, what is left to us?

Animal fear and firefly dreams. The lone catalpa
that bloomed then dropped its beans. A hunter’s gutted

buck hung from the maple made for sugar and shade.
A house, a deed, our grasp, the pitch and woo of history.




Leslie LaChance is a poet, essayist, and teacher.  She also takes photographs every day, using the photographic moment as a means to focus attention and practice mindful observation.  Among her favorite photographic subjects are gardens and honky tonks. Leslie lives in Nashville, Tennessee and teaches English at Volunteer State Community College. You can follow her photographic exploits on Instagram, where she posts as Fortunajones.



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