When the white sheet is pulled up
over a face, it signals the end.
The doctor writes time of death.
It’s final.
Not so in the garden.
White sheets come out as saviors
to tender thin beans, green plump tomatoes,
yellow trumpet zucchini blossoms.
Frost murders summer.
Those who heed weather warnings
take action like nurses readied by codes.
Billowing cotton protectors capture warm,
shroud the stems of the living.
Gauzed until the morrow
sunheat resuscitates.
Ground covers are thrown off.
Plants open their buds, stretch,
resume another day’s
moments of growth.
© by Marilyn Zelke-Windau.
Used with the author’s permission.
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