In the Community Garden (At 33rd and Powelton Sts.)
Harriet Levin

Sparse, that first spring, we could project growth,
a marking on a cellar wall to tout as comparison.

Healthy roots build resistance like a measles inoculation,
rhizomes, antibody tithers, spathes of the arum lily,

and despite accusations against the use of pesticides.
Native gardens are not special. All flowers belong to the world,

because orchids sealed in plastic on the grocery store shelf
help indigenous growers to compose new songs to stars

rising onto late night stages. You don’t have to speak English
to read the applause meter. The peonies amassed with ants
give it rain forest status on the patio of the row home

where I live. According to neighborhood lore,
the Lenni Lenape farmed tracts of ant hills.
Now those ants’ ancestors swarm through cement cracks.

The perennials we planted stake out inches of beauty,
spreading leaves overcome asphalt,
stride over the garden’s fence, cascade down spires,

blacked-out warehouses, and crystalline lots with Sleeping Beauty sleep.
You don’t remember waking. You remember ingesting something,
tilting the glass back, then your hand holding the glass grows limp

and it shatters to the ground. If you haven’t realized your mistake,
the broken glass tells you. Is it possible that pollen dust,
propagated in spring, mixes with finger print marks

and that, when the jogger’s body is buried underground
she becomes entangled with roots? For example, the myth of Daphne,
..... her calling out to her father, a god already,

his patience at the boiling point, especially after that charade of hers,
the commotion she caused, the upheaval, disturbing the pinnacle of power.
Apollo at her heels, she snaps back branches trying to trip him,

someone has to throw it back in his face —the privileged assumptions, the leaf mold.

©Harriet Levin