Some Lines for the Looming Apocalypse
After Czeslaw Milosz
On the day humanity edges over
a cliff with an unknowably steep face
I am planting a garden. Hoeing
it up during the apocalypse,
I joke to a friend who is alive
across the country. I hack up
weeds, dig deep beneath their roots
like a narrow-minded god making
room for the plants I would rather have
—arugula, basil, tomatoes, peppers—
but won’t be able to buy soon
when it is too much risk to forsake
this cozy Southern fortress for
something as ordinary as salad.
I am wearing my crumpled sunhat
to avoid aging, though I want to
age like a stubborn tree, the mighty
magnolia besieging half our yard,
its glossy green leaves insisting:
This Earth’s for me. I am staying
here where I’ve buried my roots
and spread wide my gnarled arms.
STEVIE EDWARDS is the author of Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). She is a lecturer at Clemson University and holds an MFA from Cornell and a PhD from University of North Texas. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Missouri Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere.