Tuesday poem #527 : Jessica Gigot : Joy

 

after Ross Gay

 

For me it’s the bouquet
of over-the top, dinner plate
dahlias versus tulips,
a flakey bite of thick apple pie,
not the canned sauce. The old plum
finally bears fruit again after
years of hack. Lovage
overwhelms the herb bed,
new strawberry plantlets
creep over the edge,
cling to the weed cloth,
find fresh terrain for their tiny roots.
The brazen rhubarb always
takes up more space than she
is allotted and I love,
in the early spring, how she
unfurls her grand green body
and simply does not care.

 

 

 

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020), won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Gastronomica, Crab Creek Review, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper. Her memoir, A Little Bit of Land, was published by Oregon State University Press in September 2022.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan