Why by Terence McCaffrey

I don’t know why
I’m into gardening,
but I do feel the forest
watching me. I imagine
its myriad living things
around me, cheering,
clapping their paws
or wings with each churn
of the earth. I itch
to keep checking
a single seed’s march
as if my own, to keep
willing it to sprout
out of the dark
like the birth of a star.



Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his wife and two children in West Simsbury, CT.