Warm summers I gardened here, dug and planted,
watched the slow motion of sprouts, heard bright voices,
coaxed pale queen’s ear to my underworld lyric
sung of slumbered love in roots and leaves, spread
under the sunlit drench and blossom of stubborn life.
I find my place amongst the people of the street,
neighbors stopping to enquire after these goings on,
what unknown laughter am I, tending my garden—
But now, night’s lamplit glow yellows cut stocks,
mutes lavender, the rigid insistence of crisp roses.
My two butterfly bushes, the outline of something luscious
and hungry, lend their whispers into the wisps of snow-
traced tall grasses—Nothing lasts, I am reminded
in the shimmered night’s freeze I carry as I go,
this tissued trace of inconspicuous soft body,
lips warm then wet, frail with majestic life.
Grey Sparrow Journal 