Husbandry

Crawling in the long grass at sunset
with a spritzer bottle half-full of two percent,

I want to lie down in front of a mower.
A long weekend turned the pumpkin’s leaves

into toddler’s palms caked in wet cement.
I called Dad, and he said to remove the ones

with mildew and spray the rest with milk.
I asked Really, milk? and he said, Milk.

How long before it sours on the leaf? Or is
that the point? This is the problem with living

things: they grow beyond their good, develop
ordinary diseases with absurd cures. The sprinklers

stutter at me—enough, enough, enough—
and rinse the milk from each leaf’s empty bowl.