Oh, Hello There

That’s the thing about yards and gardens. As much as you say it’s yours, as much as you cultivate and claim you control, it’s not and you don’t. And for some of us, this is a form of delight. Several times a week, I place my hand on the door knob and look at my dog Silas, asking him Ready to take a gander? And out we go on our stroll around the 1.2 acres of land we get to live on. Silas’ experience is very different from mine, his senses providing to him narratives to which I’m not privy. I have fingers, so I lift up leaves, bend things back, pry things open. I roll flower buds between my fingertips, seeing the rays of petals all puckered into a center. I open the nesting box and oh, hello there, two Eastern Bluebird hatchlings are nothing but feathers and eyes. I lift pokeweed leaves and oh, hello there, a planthopper nymph side-eyes me as I infiltrate their world of leaf-shade and sap-hunger. I briefly imagine them in my world, paging through a book that’s taking forever to read, answering phone calls about children who want to murder their parents for taking their phone away.

Hurry,
the bird
has forgotten
about the egg.