Not a fit. She never was at war,
not with weeds or aphids in the garden.
What garden? Where lions were dandy,
she licked dew from nettles, no life squandered,
no uniforms here nor rows of reeds and trumpets.
Devils lurked themselves to absurdity.
The indigenous wed what was undocumented migratory.
Orchid’s tongues wagged a welcome.
Her zone was demilitarized, an orchard of juice.
Peggy did not turn away from combatants.
Between hummingbird and crow
she negotiated an armistice.
From this soil we mulched a habitat.
Stalks sprung at midnight, emergent,
pulsing; she in-dwelled,
saw rhizomes slither, heard eucalyptus bark,
read the calligraphy of bare elbows
in their naked season contorting for a drink of sun.
Shapes slow-danced,
she never rehearsed the rot,
nor anticipated the ripe.
Paths leading nowhere she made somewhere.
She climbed the walls. Mr. Rios, we joked,
how mysterious wisteria disappeared.
She hi-diddled-diddled to Chopin's nocturnes.
In the genius of her lunacy she
made voluptuous what was gibbous,
probed craters for nuggets,
never returned with empty arms.
Finding a plant that splits the rock
was a political act.
Under a blizzard of pollen, bulbs opened
to their pistils, sang and are singing still.
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