Sweet William
at home in a hole
dug by dirty fingers
in earth forked loose
and cleared of roots and rocks
twists its mane of pink and red
in breezes
with the other garden blooms.

Proud flower,
watered by underground pipes
by spouts and hoses
drinks under sunlight
and drops, from its scented sunburst,
pearls of water
on dark soil,
on sour mulch,
on Miracle Grow,
for a season.

…

Sweet pea, dragon faced
big-nosed and veined,
quenched in thunderstorms,
climbs a sapling that
rises from a rotting stump.

Shy weed-blossom,
having wrestled with thorny twigs
and strangling weeds,
thumbs its purple beak to the
spring sun, and summer sun,
to the mud of wet June,
to the split soil of August drought,
and fans the fall breeze
that sways the ghost of Sweet William.