The Similitudes

Not much of a garden, mostly for my cat

to play at wilderness and sure, enough grows

wild in it. To garden here, is not

to lay a landscape out in measured yards

or hired out of magazines; better some

pitied weed I’ve coaxed a blossom from,

straggled through the pavement, than

some suburban faith in Eden, ersatz.

Those ones, who wove

of altar-cloth, your wedding-veils,

what say they of such

peasant lace? Like the divine Emily

rhyming Immortality with everything

inconsequential; why fine-tune

these novelties when nature

has them so? the soft

similitudes of nature.

What comes of these? wildflowers,

wilting in a coffee cup;

My cat, leaping after grasshoppers;

Only, the wood, the brick, and the narrow

weed between them.