Accidental Garden

After Sylvia Plath

Accidental garden,

How I despise you.

You bloom overnight,

Poppies unfurling in snow,

Your roots sink deep

Into the ground,

Below topsoil,

So that you remain even when the sun

Or daughters

Strip the snow away.

Your thorns, roses,

Stab through my soft belly’s flesh,

Announcing your seeding.

Poppies, you subtly steal my sleep

In the waking hours to

Offer its holocaust to goddess moon that night.

Screaming out in your bloodiness,

You, carnations, congratulate me

With your petals

For my lack,

Mocking and ironic.

Accidental garden,

I cannot show you to anyone.

Socially unacceptable,

And your first bloom,

Sunset on white sand beach

Lipstick on teeth

Red wine on cream blouse

Always fades,

And you turn brown and die,

Un-up-rootable,

Immortale homage to death and life.

Yet you remain,

Perennial,

Stigma and filament and 

Ovary,

Blooming again and again and again,

Always blood red.