Garden

there is a body in your garden exposed bones exposed blood exposed heart laid bare the walls of your garden watch the body with unease The windows of your house open onto your garden and you watch, too, the body with unease the trees are losing their leaves and the flutter from the trees into your garden you do not rake they cover the body the leaves pile high but still the body is visible through the red and yellow and orange winter is about And you pray for snow The snow comes and it smothers your chrysanthemums your lilies your roses and the body the snow piles high but it never seems high enough all too soon the snow melts and slowly the body is exposed your walls watch with dread as bone by bone the body returns the blood is dried now not the bright desperate red of fall now it is brown it is dried and cracked on the worn skin and the cold bones and it looks like dirt like mud like filth your grass had died under the snow but it begins to grow up around the body the sun and the birds and the crawling things eat away at the flesh the skin the tissue they do a better job of cleaning up than you when the violets begin sprouting from between the ribs all that is left are bones your garden is growing unsupervised you do not go in to bring back order you watch from the window as wild flowers sprout among anemones as weeds grow through the collar bones and the eyes of the body as summer rises the grass rises around the body as insects buzz in the tall grass and the body is sunk into the hot earth you do not go to the garden but the body does not go to you the garden has overgrown it and the walls surround it and you can open your window again to let in the heavy summer air Roots are strangling the earth They are cutting tangled scars through it They are snaring rocks and rabbits with no distinction made between them Living and dead mean nothing to trees Rabbits are dead between on heartbeat and the next for trees Rocks barely exist for trees Everything is slow So maybe roots don't know the pain the bring upon the earth And maybe they do and they do not care There is power in apathy