Gardening Is Also What You Cut

photo by A. Lesik

The colossal rose bush I cut down
last year is coming back.

A new shoot unfurls from my garden 
like a mourner’s unexpected desire--

pliable thorns, buds red as doll lips--

and I know that means I have work 
to do, more tunneling into earth

hunting the bandit root I left
buried there last spring. 

But I am tired of returning to my knees, 

searching for the reason 
the gone keep coming back,

and also: you are dead. 

For years I treated grief like a ghost limb, 
an absence I could feel, incurable twinge.

But now I think grief is an addition--
just look at all this self I’ve kept intact: 

name-embroidered mouth, yard-soiled 
hands, shoulders saddled by absence. 

My grief squats on top of me like a wide-brimmed hat.

Today I bought the tiniest shears.

They wait on the kitchen counter 
for a day when there's a little less sun.

You died and left me a Bible, 
a jacket, a purple rabbit's foot, a gun.

Two blooms now, where there used to be one.