Horticultural Live Stills - the thinning -

the thinning


Before slim
was beautiful,
people liked
their vegies big
so carrots had
to be thinned
to be carrots.

Us offspring
worked unclassed
in rows, pulled
up the seedled
crowds, leaving
individuals.

Forcing the
fittest to survive,
carrot planets,
with personal space
Like the planted acres
we each could roam,
to grow large.


1996 © Wayne D Knoll
...

Horti-Cultural Live Stills - not rape - baby swedes

swedes - not rape


A sowing
grew like rape,
too-thick, they
call it Canola
in Newspeak now,

I was too busy or too easy
to thin them,
-so cabbage-leaf glutted
they all runted
in together...

I let them age
until I heard
demand had little supply,
then
I cut them,
lopped top stems, cut
each root aside
to point the yellow flesh
from the radicals away
then boxed,
off to market,
the public bought them!
Once re-imaged as
'Baby Tasmanian.'

1996 © Wayne D Knoll
....

Small Life Horti-Cults: CHATS

Chats


Cut,
small,
wormy,
rotten,
waste spuds:
chats were bagged
or banana-boxed
onto the skid-standed,
truck-chassied,
3 ton tractor-trailer
till full.

Taken above
the landslip precipice
down the creek,
where, hand-tipped
like lotto balls, they
talk rot
to themselves
among the lucky
treeferns and winners
down wombat holes.

1996 © Wayne D Knoll
...

Horti-Cultural Still Lives: RUNNY EYE

runny eye

Spud plants curl and blacken,
leaves shrivel
New potatoes, underground,
have got runny eyes.

Like hurt children, weeping
life with its badness out
Stinking. Infected.
Before they've even grown.


1996 © Wayne D Knoll

Horticultural Life Smalls: TOO WHITE

was darwin too white too?


Baby squash:
I bought
the same seed
like other years
–for the Baby White
button squash,
with the slight
green-tinted bloom

But at market
they were a dud!
White? That's too pale!
Three intense acres
intensely wasted.
Half a livelihood
in rampant waste...

There's a new strain!
A trendier cultivar...
- like coloured babies -
everybody wants
to have the ones
with the fresh green tint,
for that
latest Eye-Catch
of cuteness
in baby squash.

1996 © Wayne David Knoll
........................

When Carrots Are Burning Off

Horti-Cultural Small Lives

When Carrots Are Burning Off

Four drilled rows
to a bed,
heat-germinated carrots
barely two-leaved
above ground
on Christmas Day,
the waterless carrots
burn off,
acres of stems cook, just
above ground-level,
where the sun concentrates,
selects!

like an oven
that melts all
life-force mystery
so we children had
to give time
from our one holyday
to help plumb
and fit
the half-installed pump
to give,
burn our fingers,
work to connect the
carrotless water.

1996 © Wayne David Knoll