You go inside for more drinks,
and I wander your garden.
You have left it to weed over.
Old perennials suck desperate
at the slums of the soil.
A plastic windmill sways
on a rusty stem, one vane lost.
All the rest hang their faded heads.
I found a fat Buddha
in a tangled flower bed;
hands upturned,
he invites the seasons back,
ever the optimist;
he laughs even as a vine
wraps her hands around his neck.
I’d like to reincarnate this garden.
I’d like to pull up
the clotbur and the crabgrass,
lay down fertile new soil,
plant dozens of little bombs
ready to explode in spring.
I’d scrub fat Buddha
and let him breathe. I’d fix the windmill,
I’d make barren into beautiful
but when you wobbled back,
with drinks in your hands,
I decided I always try
to fix wasted gardens,
and not this time, not this time.
