[Photo: Roy's Garden, Alison Dyer 2007]On guard for thee
Toe positioned in westward stance
Heel toward the eastern trench
A lone rubber boot, upturned on staff, presides
in centre field. A quiet commandant
rallying the troops.
All flanks armoured with bits of fencing,
metal, plastic and noisemaking:
a cadre of rusty cans, an infantry of laundry bottles,
an ambush-ready bedspring
in its deep grass position.
Scraps of onion bags, shredded tarps, a regal blue overall
arms and legs stuffed and tied with a pink silk scarf,
a cracked orange bucket and, past kitchen duty but with three good legs left for battle,
a wooden kitchen chair.
All enrolled for nocturnal combat.
In Roy’s garden Major Boot,
with a commanding view up the valley,
enlists this band of the crooked, the lost, the rejected
in the twilight war of
vegetables versus ungulates.
Toe positioned in westward stance
Heel toward the eastern trench
A lone rubber boot, upturned on staff, presides
in centre field. A quiet commandant
rallying the troops.
All flanks armoured with bits of fencing,
metal, plastic and noisemaking:
a cadre of rusty cans, an infantry of laundry bottles,
an ambush-ready bedspring
in its deep grass position.
Scraps of onion bags, shredded tarps, a regal blue overall
arms and legs stuffed and tied with a pink silk scarf,
a cracked orange bucket and, past kitchen duty but with three good legs left for battle,
a wooden kitchen chair.
All enrolled for nocturnal combat.
In Roy’s garden Major Boot,
with a commanding view up the valley,
enlists this band of the crooked, the lost, the rejected
in the twilight war of
vegetables versus ungulates.
(Alison Dyer, 2008)
Roy sets a wonderful vegetable garden near me in Caplin Cove. Only he is hounded by moose. Or just one who loves to tease and eat tender beet greens. We are toying with the idea getting a moose license (um, thoughts of tasty roasts). If only that moose knew that I gave up being a vegetarian of 16 years for moose stew!
