The Buddha Rat

     All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering brown fence
     under a low branch with its rotten apricots miscellaneous under the leaves,
     fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet;
     found a good coffeepot in the vines by the porch, rolled a big tire out of the scarlet bushes, hid my marijuana;
     wet the flowers, playing the sunlit water each to each, returning for godly extra drops for the stringbeans and daisies;
     three times walked round the grass and sighed absently:
     my reward, when the garden fed me its plums from the form of a small tree in the corner,
     an angel thoughtful of my stomach, and my dry and lovelorn tongue.