The Garden
Aya Burton

This is what I have to give you:
two blistered hands and a garden undone.
Japanese beetles with soft blue shells
scuttling across leaves of azalea,
and aphids that feast on the foxglove and tickseed
you planted three summers ago.

Each Sunday, I fill my boots with soil
that I carry from your house to mine.
(I'm trying to learn how
to bear weight that's not my own).
I sink my fingers into the earth
and kneel among the seedlings for hours,
try hardier perennials
and start over a seventh time.

One would think a green thumb
is passed down through generations but
I fail to sustain
the most basic succulent.
I admit I don't know much,
still I imagine it began like this:
you plucking out yarrow,
roots over your shoulder,
for there'd be no flower deaths
only irises come morning.

I never saw you leave the rows.
Then, one day, we both were old;
each in our own ways.
All I remembered was a tarp, a trowel,
a green gate, slowly closing.
You on one side, me on the other
and a muffled sound, like earthworms digging
channels through the soil.

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