Ribbon leaves reaching like necks of egrets into the silky dusk, just last month with its dark purple flowers, the Siberian Iris my neighbor called “ancient” was lopped
by my favorite garden tool, which I use to great effect, especially these days, wherein I control what I can
and when the bugs have bitten through, have a beer.
Bachelor’s buttons, long grass, bramble, my neighbor’s alder branches, wild geraniums: not much escapes,
and I do think about police brutality, the financial system predicated on lies, the tumor inside my aunt’s brain
which allowed her just fourteen days, none of them with her young grandson.
From my sink I can see my ugly mistake: the Iris had been done flowering, but it needn’t have been hauled up to the brush pile in August
just because it had been within my control to do so.
Some things that grow are just beautiful. We’d waited so long.
AngelfromMontgomery et al. 