Failure to Thrive I go to visit what we planted last summer, but it hides from harvest. Those sown by other hands have made good use of the heavy rains, the slick earthworm’s burrows; their stalks are waist-high and most have shed the thorns they used to crawl through the dirt to sunlight. Among these blades are trampled seedlings, scorched shoots—none of them mine. That moss-bearded man had promised me a blue and prickly thing, slow-grown and moody. When it was still a sleeping bulb I found it in a glossary: Gardener’s Holy Grail. Thrives without special care. I walk home to find the mint drowned in its bed, the violets torn from their roots. Across my doorstep: yellow pollen thick as snow.
– Published in Luminous Echoes, a poetry anthology by Into the Void Magazine.
All proceeds donated to Pieta House.
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