Garden Face
#7 of Dumb Stuff I Wrote on the Fly
Gardens. I'm reading Garden Poems, Everyman's Pocket Poetry. Rush, rush, rush.
Something I came up with literally on the fly.
A woman is reading a gardening magazine one day, coveting the yards of the wealthy snoots there in. Her husband comes in and jeers at her for acquainting her own mind with such affluent imagery. This woman sighs, removes her sunhat and gloves, buries it all under the cushions. Husband jeers some more, reminding her that cushions are not soil, that jewels and splendor will not sprout from them. He then finishes his bear, turns off the football game, and goes to bed.
But that night, wicked thoughts pay Mrs. Hilbun a visit, as thoughts are wanton to do. She rises in her bed, observes her husbands face, and starts gluing plants all over it. She imagines the mosquitos and flies will somehow tattle, that a beetle on the ceiling raises its head in stunned horror, but she continues yet. Everything she can find in her yard, she glues to her husbands face, and when she runs out of room there, she moves to the bed, the bedroom floor, spoiling the carpet with dirt and tree bark.
Before dawn, the entire house is covered with this horticultural bull shit, something that would make anyone who wasn't crazy stare at it for a while, maybe ask, "Who the hell thought this would look good?" then leave. At the crack of dawn, Mrs. Hilbun puts her gloves and hat back on, and thinks, "Can you spot the difference? Well, I expect there's more than a few that I notice just from memory. Ah, I suppose that is what I get for doing it all without my armor on."