The Cruellest Month

Garden, a Metaphor

It's war on Mother's wilderness,
the once-garden whose boundaries
grow without care or compost.

The greenery has lost the plot.
Verdant, rampant, couchant,
it climbs fences, carpets paths.

I like to get dirt on my hands.
Mother sits and whinges
about hating to be helped,

being older, frailer, unable
to kneel in the soil,
uproot the mad nastursiums.

Once down and dirty
she might never get back.
She remembers how hard

she used to love the toil
in this handkerchief plot.
She forgets how often she's told me.

I smile hard as I pull
tenacious green weeds
like teeth. Be patient.

The most gorgeous
flowers flop and rot
in the fragrant and sensual soil.




April 17-- free-choice or take a field trip somewhere and respond to that in a poem