The Bluestone Review 2025

Poetry

The Work of Minor Gods Mark Vogel

On the low coffee table the civilized horticulture text freezes ancient garden arrangement, years of hands-on digging and cutting back, arguing a garden can be finished, made permanent like art arranged in the museum, labeled and frozen on the wall, despite the ache to newly create outside in the ever-evolving garden. Like all histories, forgetting is immediate— then replanted with reverence alongside white and red peonies blooming before the front door. Forgotten, hostas’ peace for a quiet decade outside the country cabin— now at home in this recrafted dappled whole. Forgotten, the cane’s six-hundred-mile migration from Missouri creek-beds beneath limestone cliffs. Forgotten, unearthing Snake Mountain flame azaleas, now ten feet tall in this yard. How Japanese irises freed from David’s choking intimacy now bloom as individuals beside the nearly wild pasture fence. Forgotten, how Melissa’s gooseberries came to make the far corner whole. How yellow forest sedum carried from the hickory woods now carpets the rock garden. How a neurotic gardener (me) evolved into a minor god designating which plant is privileged. No matter the questionable chronology— the dream is sufficient unto today, each bud touched, each toad welcome in this dirtied ecology. All is temporary/even these wide eyes attuned (today) to this communal pulse. who remembers yesterday’s blueberries ripped without ceremony from the niche,

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