Herein we describe plants as a function of desire. This
Demands a story of intellectuals in the fields
Of good old Mister Roderick, Johnny Come Lately and
Sir Manqué. Rounding the bend we come to a Roman Aquaduct
And ducked under the arch. This deserves a dozen replays
In the media having graduated from the library
To the inner ear just shy of the cerebellum. If the book said
Keep your thoughts to yourself, do. The plants are deafening
And if you hear these uneasy noises, we may blush.
All the definitions involve shaking us awake from imagining
And no one likes to be awakened to actual facts.
That is why you’re here and why we are tending the tomatoes.
Otherwise all we’d eat would be rice and millet. Indentured
Servitudes. Have you come around and kicked the tires?
There’s a passage in which the plants did it by themselves
And even still there was a tendency to make arrangements.
The gardener worked hard to make sure everything is very beautiful
And edible also. With elbow grease the former starts including me
With my dreadful innovations. Who dreads the legumes of a mere
Roderick? I can always become more hifalutin in passing
These annuals and those London planetrees. When you remember
Unfortunately you don’t actually remember. The story
Buries the story with this particular shovel. By the hazelnut grove
We were educating each other to our likes and dislikes, refinements
While Evelyn loved Roderick on her days off. We laugh at such
Staff setups. From this angle you can see the newest cultivars.
Even no one tending is almost someone. For a while at least
We can nibble through. Is this boulder ersatz or just too heavy?
I’ll never tell good parks from the woods and good gardens
From a salad. The forest as we walk forms rows of trees.
Let us then derelict our duties. This must be the mulch and this
Your meditation rock. See here the Roderick last seen
Mistaking poetry for fiction. In the greenhouse he would not
Have erred. We call this the school within the schools
Like at the gates of the garden I wondered what were for.
Breezes that shook us in our travels shock us with their gentleness
As we stroll under the galleries to where it was we were going anyway
In conversation. How do you always do everything so slowly?