Garden

The garden is a map that redraws itself daily. Two paths meet in a head of grass.

Route of wind & route of the ichneumon, her witching sticks tap-tap-tapping for the green blood of her quarry.

A bumblebee circumnavigates the purple abdomen of a coneflower like the hour hand on a lover’s clock which always moves too quickly, albeit sometimes in reverse.

The sun priests of the Aztecs thought of the heart as a flower & the dagger as a hummingbird’s beak. A bad metaphor can be fatal.

The poppies’ sea-green pods swell like thought-balloons in the comics, each one empty except for an asterisk.

Where lilies are concerned, I like the word better than the flower, the idea better than the word, the lilies of the forest better than the lilies of the field.

The children were tired of lawns & streets and being watched. They found a blank spot in the garden’s map & never came home.