Those lumpish mounds of dead leaves
huddled along the back fence are the blackberries
that overran the yard—five of us took all day
with hoe and shovel
gloves and machete
cutting them back last spring
to plant this garden and look: everything is puddles
and dissolution—borders breached, eroded beds,
the bean-row furrows
obliterated.
The tree stump in the middle
is old growth redwood cut knee high last century.
Its upper branches shaded all this ground and now
its broad girth serves
as garden altar:
the rain slick surface glistens
pocked by the downpour pooling in the weathered grooves
of its annual rings. Each year it sprouts back
another chaplet
of sapling shoots.