Instead

Instead of enjoying the sun or watering my garden,

I'm figuring taxes. What's the world come to when, in April,

we're lodged behind computer screens

instead of getting dirt under our fingernails.

Instead of watching the small cucumber plants take root,

I'm grading papers. I should've asked my students to, instead,

plant a garden. What worth will these words have

if they can't eat? Instead of silence and birdsong,

I'm click, click, clicking these lines out to you--

anybody. Instead of sitting on a blanket under the sky,

lying beside my beloved and right under heaven.