Thursday, September 04, 2008

For my husband, on our 20th anniversary

Perennial
for Neil

You don't trust me near
green and growing things. Ripe
tomatoes cower on the vine, sunflowers lean
away from my shadow. We are a pair--
you, patient hands buried in a pile
of mulch, the skin on my arms, pale,
sun-starved. I struggled to learn
the language of stillness, seedlings in a line,
but the allure of your garden is as alien
today as the first season you kissed the nape
of my neck and prayed for rain.

--LJCohen, 2008

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