Wit, Plots and Vegetative Results

Jay Macpherson in The Boatman and Other Poems presents a memorable tale of of one-upmanship and just deserts in "The Gardeners" where the poetic voice reports on a contrast. One gardener, a neighbour, "Worked herself to bone / Raising prize bokays / In a yard mostly stone". The spelling of "bouquet" as "bokays" adds a layer of what I perceive as snobbery to the prized beauties. The speaker meanwhile is rocking on the back stoop and notes that the neighbour would pass the following remark: "And she'd say my yard / Looked like a chicken-coop."

The last word in the next and final stanza of two reverses the judgement. Here it is in full. Enjoy its fancy.

Bet you she's raging
Over in her plot:
Nary a stalk but
Couchgrass she's got
Can't grow nothing better
On the likes of she,
But I lie pushing daisies
Fat and white as me.

Post-mortem fertility is an interesting cartoonish game to play and with a deft turn of rhyme easy to guarantee the appropriate comeuppance. And we all know that the easy rhyme comes from long exercising the craft — much like a devoted gardener.

And so for day 1192
19.03.2010