Deborah Guzzi

Clipped Crops and Croquet Mallets

I miss so many things: the old pear tree, which once lived by the walk and the bees inside. The bees almost never stung, but made the most delightful buzz. The smell of the pear blossoms and the fruit as it rotted on the ground. I even miss the colonies of ants, which swarmed. You see I cut it down. Well, the bees stung my ex-husband, or, he was scared of the bees, or some such thing. The bees like the cat, knew more about the true core of the man than I did. Once the cat shat on his side of the bed, and pulled the sheet over it. Even then, I didn’t really hear nature’s call. I miss the rose bushes [I tore them out] because of the June bugs. “Mustn’t have untidy, ugly, things around me,” fool that I was, and continue to be. I have almost eradicated the wild violets, can you believe? Soon, even I will be gone. “Who will remember all that sweetness? Oh, the pear crisp with crumbled cinnamon crust on a fall day, all gone.”

a mown lawn
stretches to the horizon –
a hedge clipper whirs

The Rose Queen was a lesser villain than I. She was imaginary and I am real, or so I believe. “If you’d lived with Alice would you have played croquet with a flamingo club?”