Covering the Beds

Jack Frost begins his three day gig tonight when 12 am temps fall to the age of college sophomores lacking AP credits. An eternal optimist, I winter garden, hoping to make Monet’s brush strokes edible, in my four, 80 square foot, French Biodynamic beds. Euphonious winter lettuces that glow like ruby peonies or emerald-leaved camellias: Brune d’Hiver, Merlot and Red Sails. Kale cultivars embrace frost, and their sage-green to rosy bodies makes them as luscious as freshly licked nipples on an arching chest. With Mr. Frost imminent, I mosey out to the garage for my bed blankets; thin, muslin-like sheets of spun synthetic, that hug ground, and hold temperatures a few degrees above icicle air. Pulling these bed-clothes over my plants, I anchor each corner with a russet clay brick, discarded from my neighbor’s last remodel, which leads me to thoughts about the barriers we grow ourselves to cloak true feelings: depression, abuse, languidness, and lust, and how these mantles vary in thickness from millimeters to inches — a smiling mouth with down-turned corners rather than tears. And yearning to peel back those mantles, like my garden covers, post-frost, I grasp that all we desire is a body three or four degrees warmer than our own, next to us in bed.

Gary D. Grossman
MacQueen’s Quinterly 22, 2024