Conversation With a Bleeding Heart

Up again, are you?
Always sooner than I think to look.
Always stronger than I thought you'd be.
What are your plans?
Will you take over again, smother the sunny flowers?
Or will the frost bite you back, turn you to mush?

You're red as blood; cruel, inexorable
Despite your beauty.
You carve your space, elbows out
A slow-motion black eye to any plant coming close.
Three years you've ruled this garden
Spreading farther every April
Coming back, coming back, coming back.

A month from now you'll sprawl as wide as I am tall.
I wonder why I give you room.

I could take a shovel, dig you out
to plant somewhere else
or throw on the heap out back
The mound of plants that didn't work out.
You'd rot down to nourish the ones who come after.

I could, you know.
The poacher's spade would do it.
Weedy dock or bleeding heart: all the same to the narrow blade.
So watch yourself.