End-of-the-Week Excerpt: "Inheriting the Garden" by Ren Powell

Inheriting the Garden

We promised ourselves we'd plant posies
but all that time the bed lay barren.

It was summer when we moved from that place.
And the world seemed filled
with the bursting of dandelions.

The former tenants of this house understood seasons:
snowdrops, lemoinei, jackmanii --

But now, here, in late autumn
two monstrous roses press,
vulgar against the kitchen windowpane.

And too often at breakfast
I find myself holding my breath.

from Ren Powell's Mercy Island: New and Selected Poems