Poems by Katharine Harer
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Gifts
by Katharine Harer
From Canary Summer 2020
Katharine lives across the water from San Francisco, where she is surrounded by green hills that are home to coyotes, deer, bobcats, skunks and raccoons. San Rafael Creek originates in the hills and flows into a canal in the center of town and continues on into the Bay, and bright, white egrets, ducks, and shorebirds come to the wetlands to feed and nest; in winter wild Coho salmon spawn in local creeks.
Small, pale green with stripes, squash
holding fast to their prickly vine
Michael next-door started it
never meaning for it to become mine.
Caravan of leaves, huge deep yellow flowers
stomping the lettuce, bending the tomato plants.
Everywhere. In the way. Tough and sure.
Come on, I whisper. Keep coming.
Gridlock on the pathway
I trip over the hairy-legged creeper
lift the umbrella-leaves
looking for dinner.
“Volunteers,” I tell my husband.
Gifts, I think.
A car that runs, a roof that doesn’t leak,
a body that carries me
into the nectar-touch of water
the length of the pool and back.
The world is not right. Don’t think I don’t know.
A second vine appears.
I make soup. Pale orange. Velvety.
© Katharine Harer