We Shall Rise, Again!

When first we moved to this house,
the backyard was a hillside, sliding toward St. Paul.
The previous owner wore T-shirts that showed
he also muscled a push-mower up-and-down
the half acre hillside. I had a twenty-dollar,
used mower that dragged me up-and-down.

Using a hundred meters of edging stones,
I laid a stream-bed of wild flowers
from top-south to bottom-north, winding.

"Perennials!", I thought, not knowing that
perennials would eventually want to become
eight-foot-tall, deep-rooted, tributaries to the Mississippi.

Day-dreaming one day, I let a newer mower drift off
into the raging river of wildflower eternals,
unable to locate it until it stopped snowing.

I have put my principles aside, to do the right thing,
and chemically discouraged the flowering forest
(with degradable poison) in order to start over.

This time, there shall be annuals!
The annuals jump to the sun,
not depending on deep roots to China.
The bag of seeds lies on the dining room floor.

Outside, it continues to snow. April snow.
Late April snow. April snow showers.
Starving chipmunks knock at the door
and ask to see what it is they smell
on the dining room floor. I curse
their audacity and put the seeds in a jar.

There shall be Spring, again, and a stream of flowers!
I have doubts about both resurrection and damnation,
but I believe in flowers, although lilies give me doubts.
I believe in earth, and birth, and Spring.
I believe in Autumn, too--mine--and mine
is a stream-bed of flowers in the Spring.

P:retty soon, now.

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