Flower Petals in the Mud
While we sleep, the deer decapitate our zinnias,
spit out the bitter petals, trample them in loam,
and break the backs of tomato vines,
aborting fruit that now will never grow up,
a discovery that soon enough we will make
as a child and I go out to check the garden
where he will search my eyes to understand.
Jerry Krajnak is a former altar boy and a Vietnam veteran who went on to survive forty-plus years in public school classrooms. He shares an old cabin in the North Carolina mountains with several rescue animals and, when lucky, an occasional grandchild. Recent poems can be found in New Verse News, Rat’s Ass Review, SBLAAM, and other journals and anthologies.