Haikus from Zemora

pieces of summer
parting words in haiku form
with love, zemora.

the blur of farming
feels like time is speeding up
as summer winds down

june, july, august
all day every day
in rain, mud, and sun

hot as heck out here
according to our logbook
one hundred and three

i've learned so many
things here, many of them have
to do with farming.

i leave with new skills
trellis, transplant, rake, or seed,
bed prep, plant, and weed

now i understand
in harvesting tomatoes,
gentleness is key.

when used correctly
scuffle hoes might surprise you
with their great power.

fairwell, oh sweetest
furry creature of the field
our friend the groundhog

just kidding, please leave
our vegetables alone
and never come back.

nina! and nicole!
and kirsten! and sarah! and
yona! and vicky!

y'all are really the best
i know we'll cross paths again
thanks for teaching me.

love, revolution,
talking in the fields all day
'bout the food system.

our community
supports our agriculture
how awesome is that?

Poems from Walden by Haiku

By Ian Marshall

a long war with weeds
sun and rain and dews
on their side

distinctions with the hoe
level one species
cultivate another

seeds
see if they'll grow in this soil
truth and the like

Carrot Harvest

By Zemora Tevah

Sweetness stored in soil
Pop says earth as she lets go
Vibrant purple roots

Poems about Rain!

Rain
by Shel Silverstein

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE
(An excerpt from)
By William Wordsworth
I
THERE was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

II

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;--on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the splashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

Some Summer Poetry!

I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner -- thundershower, rainbow, smooth water and warm night. A rainbow on the brow of summer.

-Henry David Thoreau

Summer is a new song everyone is humming.

-Diane Ackerman, Cultivating Delight

Ojala que lleuva café—May it rain coffee in the countryside

By Juan Luis Guerra, Dominican poet

Ojala que llueva café en el campo
Que caiga un aquacero de yucca y te
Del cielo una jarina de queso blanco. . .

May it rain coffee in the countryside.
Let a downpour of cassava and tea fall.
From the skies a drizzle of white cheese,
And to the south a mountain of watercress and honey.

May it rain coffee in the countryside.
Comb a tall hill with grain and yams.
Go down the slope of fluffy rice,
And keep ploughing with your love.

In the autumn, instead of dry leaves,
May my harvest be dressed in pitisale.
Plant a field of sweet potatoes and strawberries
May it rain coffee.

May it rain coffee in the countryside,
That down on the farm, there is not so much suffering.
May it rain coffee in the countrysides,
So that in Villa Vazquez they head this song.
May it rain coffee in the countryside,
So that all the children sing.
May it rain coffee in the countryside,
So that in La Romana they hear this song.
May it rain coffee.

Weird Bird by Shel Silverstein

Birds are flyin' south for winter.
Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,
Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',
Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.
He says, "It's not that I like ice
Or freezin' winds and snowy ground.
It's just sometimes it's kind of nice
To be the only bird in town."

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Indian Summer – These are the days when birds come back- by Emily Dickinson

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, --
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

A Girl's Garden by Robert Frost

A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!

"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.

This Compost by Walt Whitman

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last.