Now, I watch you cut roses by the fruit trees when the
day is limonada cool and smooth. On Telfair we get full sun.

The birds do not sing keep sweet, be good;
They only watch us plant our seeds &
shed their feathers like blessings.

We trench out rows for zinnias, cosmos,
mauve-ish echinacea; the soil turns
& my tether unbraids itself slower, & less.
Just like this, beautiful begins to mean more
than it did.

Do you see the way time & un-time become ripe on the mulberry tree?
& the way our sunflowers grow friendly, fully sure of each other?
Have you thought how the orange cat at the back door
who owns so many names
has known us,
& our home,
& the smell of our hands?

This is what our first spring will always be:
cuttings from the garden like babies brought
home from a hospital. Dried petals strewn
Across the kitchen stove. Flowers on flowers,
marveled at & memorialized
over & over & again.