From the dVerse blog for Tuesday Poetics: May 29, 2018: “Here’s what I want you to use tonight as inspiration for your poem. I’ve listed some street names for you, and I want you to imagine what the street is like…or who might live there…or how the name came about.”

The street name I selected from the list is Buttgarden Street.

We pass this way most every day,
my faithful dog and I,
and on this street a man we meet,
his mutt heeled at his side.

We greet as neighbors tend to do
a nod and friendly hi.
Our dogs sniff at their private parts;
we turn a modest eye.

A garden for the neighborhood
some volunteers commenced,
fronts this street for several feet
behind a cyclone fence.

“I wish they’d put this somewhere else,”
my neighbor groused aloud.
“This used to be a quiet street.
Now every day’s a crowd.”

True, many gardeners come each day
to tend their tidy beds.
With backs bent low, they weed and sow,
as blood runs to their heads.

Perhaps someday we’ll see green stalks
of veggies grown with care.
But until then there’s just a crop
of butts up in the air.