Humbly I till the garden of letters,
seeds and seeming fruit and flowers
ripe for picking or peering at.
For my own recreation and amusement,
they are my treasured memorials,
my rage against the dying of the light.
And if speech dialectic is not my call,
or house to house my words and private
wisdom and print for unnamed others?
I care only that I do not forget.
Thus I behold tender inclusion into ordered rows
their slow growth and interweaving and interleaving.
This is a past time where my days are spent.
If by chance my son or daughter stops by
to see and savor my works, know that my labors
were in truth not just mine and not just me.
They are treasures against forgetting who I am,
and who I was.
