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State Rep. Denise Provost has a new poetry collection out with Somerville’s Ibbetson Street Press, Curious Peach. She writes The Times, “I’ve always been highly attuned to seasons, weather, and the natural world around me. Several years ago, I collected a number of poems on these themes, arranged them chronologically through the passage of a year’s time, and kept rewriting every word and line until I was mostly satisfied. Most of these poems are hyper local. They include such subjects as Somerville street trees, the wild roses in the parking lot of the porter Square Star Market, and my neighborhood after a snow storm. This sonnet is about the effort to grow vegetables in our difficult urban garden – which, of course, is a metaphor for many other endeavors besides.”

Denise Provost

Encore

This summer was too hot for runner beans.

They wouldn’t even blossom in such heat,

but produced only a cascade of leaves –

huge, heart-shaped; hung in shingled stacks of green.

In autumn, they produce a cautious bloom,

their big-lipped flowers peering out below

an ample shade of foliage, that grows

in snaking twists, upon a tent of poles.

Late in the fall, I rake my fingers through

the luscious tangle of the still-green vines;

within their deep interior I find

a plentitude of long, sweet beans that grew

half-hidden there. Who could anticipate,

from these old plants, a harvest come so late?

— Denise Provost

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Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu