Garden Plot Near Woods.

"Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet." Gerard Manley Hopkins It's been years since he bent with a hoe, or hosed creekwater onto his plantings. New vines burn rust into thickets of asparagus, marigold gone unruly and raspberry reborn year after year. His hedge of cornflowers gone dry re-seeds second purples and pinks. Dandelions puff a foot high, old summer phlox tangle with four o'clocks growing like weeds in the weeds. What becomes of cultivated toil, the plants it tenders to showpiece bloom? I make my way through scents of green singe and mint and uproot nothing. He would like this fraying sprawl even now-how it quickens toward wildness along the south slope. On a lime-green stump, moss thickens like short fur, and mushrooms rise in new flesh, old whiteness amid entanglements that simply move on toward a patience of creek stones.