The knotted candyflower and the bleeding hearts
were supposed to like the shade: perversely
they are flourishing now in the bright sun
around the trunk of the cut down maple;
a surging lace skirt for the dragon lilies.
Nothing is as it was supposed to be, this year.
The lilies lift their horns, and their throats
are thick with flies. Here is the garden
where all our sins are remembered, where
all the embers are numbered, where the fires
join hands and sing across the Gorge: a canticle
for rain forests that were never meant to burn.
Well. Lift the black target of the compost bin,
upend the glass pan. Down falls the onion skin,
the flakes of garlic paper,
the potato that rotted on the shelf.
Down roll peels of bananas and oranges
from Costa Rica; the bamboo sleeves of
coffee grounds from the Eje Cafetero:
nymph, in thy orisons be all my words forgot.