green as spearmint, crisp as paper

[pensnest]

Thank you, everyone who sent good wishes for our wedding anniversary!

I seem to have been silent on DW for over a week, without really meaning to. Lots of last-minute Convention stuff occupying my head, I suppose. We had a dress rehearsal, which went very well, we had a house guest, and I've been trying to pick flints out of the trench-outlines on our back lawn. There are about a million flints, and an hour gets maybe a square meter cleaned of them, so. Hmm. The idea was to get the lawn cleaned up before the landscapers come, but I have emailed the landscaper and he has yet to update me—they were supposed to be here at the beginning of May, or earlier. Hmmmm.

In the meantime I have been cultivating vegetables, eager to put them into my nice, fresh veg beds... when they are done. There is a veritable forest of little tomato plants (four varieties!), some healthy looking sweetcorn, three thriving pumpkins, a couple of green courgettes doing nicely and a couple of yellow ones just beginning to show. Plus—I hope—some celeriac, but it's taken so long to germinate it might actually be something else. I've never grown it before so I don't know how it should look. I have just sown some Blue Lake beans, but I'll reserve the rest of the beans to sow directly next month. If I get my veg beds. Grrrrr. The garden window sills are rather full. And I also transpotted my house plants, which all seem to be thriving nicely! Three of them have purple leaves, and I approve of purple leaves.
*
I found myself unexpectedly reacting to some footage from Ukraine. It isn't *good*, but it is something creative, and that makes a welcome change. Under the cut, for ugliness.


i want to slash the paper with my pen
tear at it, jagged; scrape
the smooth offensive surface, anodyne,
scratch it and rend it and break it
like life

black holes in buildings
anguished and accusing, gaping at death
crumbed mortar and splayed wire
dust in choking clouds and sickening layers
over dead homes

rubble and broken panes
streets void of life
graves, turned out
burn the witness flesh
it doesn't count as human
to treacherous minds

words are insufficient
the inexpressible cannot be stated
in ordinary syllables
destroy the paper
and ignite the scraps
to tell the truth

Comments

[lilysea]

Are the flints

flint knives/arrowheads/etc

or just random bits of untooled rock?

[pensnest]

Sadly, just random bits of rock. Some are as big as a cauliflower, though most are pebble sized. There are also some rounded pebbles in there, just to confuse.

[minoanmiss]

I think your poem is very evocative of the impossibility of containing the huge horrors in prose on papper. *appplauds*

[pensnest]

Thank you! It's not at all my usual thing, but flowed out surprisingly easily.

[frausorge]

That is very visceral. Thank you for sharing it.

Also, I hope all your plantings flourish.

[pensnest]

Thank you.

I hope I get proper veg beds soon to put them in—the sweetcorn are getting very tall!

[turps]

It sounds like you're going to have an excellent planting season this year!

[pensnest]

I hope so! I find the seed-planting stage great fun, but tend to fall down a bit further along the cycle of life.

[turlough]

Your lawn sounds remarkably like most lawns here though in ours it's granite instead of flint. Trying to dig new bedding is a nightmare!

All the good luck with your veggies!

That's so stark!