Somewhere in the late summer garden
that is slowly turning into fall
the way a green fern curls into papery brown,
gently caressing it’s demise,
there is a poem hiding.

I can feel it.
I’m going to hunt for it,
like a leopard stalking it’s prey.

The poem leaps through the garden
like a little mouse jumping in tall grasses.

It’s hides in the little chickadee,
perched on an exhausted sunflower,
picking out seeds.

It sneaks with the sleek squirrel
between the playhouse stairs under the hazlenut tree.

It’s in the late afternoon sun,
breaking through the clouds
and making the white flowers glow.

It’s in the whispy tall grasses
that sway like tipsy paintbrushes.

Poetry parades in the gaudy orange nasturtiums,
holding up their pert round leaves like summer parasols.

There’s beauty in the watercolor rainbow
painted across the sky
as fine rain falls through the sunshine.

Sweet comfort in the sounds of the wood pecker
calling from rooftops, the brown chicken clucking,
the water fountain gurgling softly…

Poetry sprawls across the lazy blue sky
and laughs now the rain is gone,
how we scuttled about putting away things before they got too wet.

It flies in the sun shining silver on a seagull’s back
as it swoops over the graveyard behind our garden.

This poem, which has been calling me for days,
is in the grass, the dirt, everywhere.

And now, having devoured the garden with my eyes, it’s in me.