Garden Varieties
The sky has not fallen,
plinths of moon and unnamed stars
splay in her hair.
Everything is as it should be.
A wooden nickel in the hand of a fool.
I watch her stringing her prized azaleas
one half of the yard coloured in prayer.
Swarms of honeybees gather like poets
at the lilac's pursed lips.
Somehow I see Christ roaming
in the foliage of the green shade tree
hanging by the fists, teetering lovingly
from one particularly large branch,
cusps of butternut shells
and horrible
but ordinary truths, hurdling form his teeth.
And the sunlight falling.
I have stayed true to poetry
its incendiary ways,
studied and searched
for what already half the world knows.
If I have been wrong about colours
and the tiny explosion of things
let me be right at least
in the predisposition of my prayer.
For the love of her azaleas
let the finishing of a poem
be a mighty thing,
rank with grave battle
and the simplest unforgiveable joy,
be like her own garden of poems
an occasion to rejoice.