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.

UnCanna Beauty

I never wanted a canna here.
I'd missed it in the digging.
It lived through two hard winters
Its thick ugly root, an ankle underground
Pushed up a spear, then another
Unfolded emerald chalices, ready to bloom.

Silly tropical thing, shading rightful lavender.
I didn't bother to dig it out but
Neither did I wish it well.
When he rides his bicycle
He hits it with his palm.
Its leaves are tattered. I haven't asked him to stop.

You are facing me and we are talking
and neither wants to be here
In this particular moment
Sixteen years calls a familiar tune
For this awkward pas de deux.

It's the wrong time to say it
But knowing me, you do.
Look behind you, turn around slowly.

She hangs before the canna's lip
Up, back, dip, probe, kissing deep
Wings backlit, fanning flame.

This ill-timed beauty, this misplaced grace
Survives our best attempts to root it out.