I'm the Gross National
green thumb & how
my garden grows

I pull suckers from cornstalks
& watch an American toad gobble a likewise American earthworm
with Plato-like detachment

I describe to them the passage in
The Structure of Complex Words
concerning The Bulpington of Blup

I say You toad be G. K. Chesterton
& you stalks be Stephen Duck & H. G. Wells
& you suckers seven times seven types of William Empson

O the sun in its going & going down & going away
covers our great earth
with unutterable beauty