Category Archives: Gardening

Come The Autumn Rains – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

“Autumn wins you best by its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.” Robert Browning

Come The Autumn Rains

Long days of weary heat
have baked us like 
kiln-fired earthenware,
the ground is dry, parched,
the spade creates shards,
powdery dust touches me in
ways I cannot speak,
come the autumn rains
the ground will surrender softly,
leaves will sleep into soil
stirring seeds of life,
and I will awaken.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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Filed under awareness, Free Verse, Gardening, life, poem, quote, seasons

To Notice Is The Thing – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting the Haibun with an invitation to write about Late Spring.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Late Spring

Image by Michael Siebert from Pixabay

“Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring?” Neltje Blanchan

To Notice Is The Thing

Perhaps is wasn’t the first of September, rather, sometime later in spring that I noticed green shoots all around me. An awareness crept slowly to mind, though I felt it longer than I thought it. I was overcome with the warmth of the sun and the light seemed to add a clarity previously absent.

It was as if I had been taken by spring, embodied. I was in that moment hopeful. Imagine, if the old plum tree flourished then surely all would be well. It was that kind of feeling. I wanted to touch the earth so plunged my hands into the soil. It was like that moment you enter a cafe and all the smells hit you at once. Here was abundance, here was potential. Here life could be planted and reaped once again.

Looking everywhere
even in the towns of mourn
seeds of hope blossom



Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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The Sadness Of Binary Gardens – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sarah is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about weeds.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Weeds Rule OK?

Image by Martina from Pixabay

“A weed is but an unloved flower.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Sadness Of Binary Gardens

There was a time when I
was a more zealous weeder
than I am right now.
I was full of the 
doctrines of identification,
learning to label and classify,
to take the hoe and cut
off the roots of community,
separating one plant from another,
those deemed less worthy 
to be be incinerated,
binned,
forgotten.
Some weeds are marked as
ready to be sprayed or cut down,
others are tolerated for a time.
Such is the everyday garden 
of this world where not all
plants are equal.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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Filed under awareness, community, ecology, Free Verse, Gardening, history, injustice, life, nature, poem, politics, quote

The Moment – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” Matsuo Basho

The Moment 

Sitting
at day's end,
a belated summer inferno,

I should pack away the chairs,
but why end the moment.

The beer bottle is sad,
tools still on the ground,

I notice a rogue sucker on the lemon tree.

Perhaps it is time for me to go.

A fantail twits and flits mosquitos,
the setting sun suggests a verse,
O to be bitten by such love.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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As To Depth – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon





Image by Adina Voicu from Pixabay 

“To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi

As To Depth

Everyone digs differently,
a pathology of sorts,
some stand upright,
others lean in,
some plunge while
others lightly tread 
in the spade.

As to depth
its anyone's guess,
but I always try to go deep
to air the soil  and loosen the sod,
my rhythm is well honed;
I can feel the pull, the turns,
the heave and heft,
in every muscle mine.



Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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The Tree Root – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“It seemed to me that some things were ugly enough that fixing them was worth trespassing.” Brenna Yovanoff

The Tree Root

It started with a tree root,
which required much thought,
not unlike a military strategy
to follow the mischief imagined,
and, sure enough
it leapt through the garden edging
and, characteristically, it ran
shallow through the lawn,
around the water pipe,
the reticulation pipe,
requiring much surgery,
then under the paving,
pushing up, up, up
till we tripped and stumbled
then down, down, down
into the drain and
round, round, round
in a frenzy through and through
in a confusion inviting reconstruction,
out and along the border garden,
clogging the soil,
refusing the spade,
out to the fence and
under the weak spot
reordering its level before
heading off to the curb.
What seemed like a five minute job,
became a plumber,
a reticulation expert,
some brick-paving,
a little edging,
lawn repair,
fixing a drain,
realigning a fence,
some swearing,
much money,
and that's not the end of this story.


Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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One Day – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: BBC Gardener’s World Forum

“… flowers fall amid our longing and weeds spring up amid our antipathy.” Dogen

One Day

There's a corner of my garden where I nurture neglect,
not much grows there except tenacious weeds
who are visited by long draughts of distant leaves,
where the sod is stiff and unresponsive,
cluttered with roots and lost aspirations,
a vacuous plot of hopes and dreams that mock my inertia,
clouded by dark towering shrubs that refuse to light my way,
leaving no room for change,
sucking my energy just to look at it,
putting it off to another day, 
a years delay,
well one day, 
someday, 
I will transform it.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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Accepting The Tears – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sarah is hosting Prosery (144 words of prose) with an invitation to use a line from a poem by Michael Donaghy called ‘Liverpool.’

The line offered is: “she’d had it sliced away leaving a scar.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Slices and Scars

Photo: gharpedia.com A tree wound healing.

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

Accepting The Tears

Unnerving she thought, when we realise how parallels weave their way through our lives. Here among her trees she was confronted with last autumn's pruning. The liquid amber had suffered in the winds and one of its beautifully shaped branches had split and she'd had it sliced away leaving a scar where the limb had once protruded. She hadn't connected it before, but at the same time her father had died. Only now she sensed that she had a scar of grief about her, the tears welled as she remembered the pain she'd excised. She touched the healed callus fibres and felt the ridge where the cut had been, noticing the feelings in herself. The tree was making good progress. Not that she wasn't, but she felt the rawness of the premature cut, maybe now was the time to feel, to finally accept the tears.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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Doing What I Can – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.” Tom Hiddleston

Doing What I Can

The garden is many things and
not least a teacher in the art of life,
the spider building patiently in a breeze,
ants forming lines of communication,
birds gathering fibres for nesting
one beak-full at a time over a morning,
the apricot tree still letting go its
autumn gold so slowly in the rain,
me pulling weeds methodically
so that energy is conserved,
all the while reminding myself
that life is all about taking time,
doing what I can, when I can,
taking small steps and rejoicing 
in the little things.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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To Tilt The World – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: backyardbuddies.org.au. which also appeared in February for a different poem- a Burrowing Frog

“Politics is the most corrupt profession on earth, no matter where you are.” Charles Dance

To Tilt The World

The burrowing frog must not be sliced.
I resume weeding my contemplative space,
conscious of worms, skinks, silver eyes, beetles,
in the special corner of my garden
where my conscience is raw, open,
and yet there is a man in the Kremlin, 
the palace, the senate, the curia,
someone some place who I 
would not think twice to slice
had I the the chance to tilt the world,
correcting the pH
of the glug that stifles
every breath
of peace 
in me.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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