4.29.15

And we're caught up, with one day to go! 

Rooted

Years become predictable.

I walk through the garden, naming

each early sprout:  fleshy purple heads

of balloon, flower, hydrangea’s dead wood

sprung with delicate green, pruned

rosebush the color of old blood,

allium pale green-blue and spilling

out of the ground like a fountain, peony,

clematis that never blooms, dependable

mum. Last year’s eggshells

dot this spring’s black dirt, a cycle, a flow

I am still not accustomed to.

Things have places.  The scenery never changes,

just shifts through seasons.  I know where

in the yard the wind is strongest, where the leaves

collect all winter, what will need cutting

back this month.  Cut it back, and it regrows.

I am here to see it.  I have regrown several times,

different but the same, some years

more blooms than others.  I used to think

I was a sunflower, short-lived, on fire,

blazing through the riot of August and September.

Now I wonder if my roots have caught too deep,

If I’m something else after all—if I’m just

the clematis that never blooms, that doesn’t like

where it’s planted, waiting for just the right

conditions.  Will this damn thing ever

shoot purple stars like it’s supposed to,

will it ever rejoice in the black dirt, sun, rain,

the cycle of being permanently planted?