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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Soto
Gary Soto
Born in Fresno, California, in February, 1952, to working-class Mexican-American parents, Gary Soto is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including New and Selected Poems (1995), which was a National Book Award finalist...
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FURTHER READING
Poems about Gardens
Letter to Brooks [Spring Garden]
by Major Jackson
Angel of Duluth [excerpt]
by Madelon Sprengnether
Bulb Planting Time
by Edgar Guest
Done With
by Ann Stanford
Garden Homage
by Medbh McGuckian
Herb Garden
by Timothy Steele
Lucinda Matlock
by Edgar Lee Masters
October (section I)
by Louise Glück
osculation for easter flower
by Sandra Miller
Telling the Bees
by Deborah Digges
The Garden
by Andrew Marvell
The Garden Year
by Sara Coleridge
The Public Garden
by Robert Lowell
They'll spend the summer
by Joshua Beckman
Trees in the Garden
by D. H. Lawrence
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Looking Around, Believing  
by Gary Soto

How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind —  white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We're keeping busy — 
This way, that way, we're making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.



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"Looking Around, Believing," from New and Selected Poems by Gary Soto. Copyright © 1995 by Gary Soto. Used by permission of Chronicle Books.
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