Perennial
for Neil
You don't trust me near
green and growing things. Ripe
tomatoes cower on the vine, sunflowers lean
away from my shadow. We are a pair--
you, patient hands buried in a pile
of mulch, the skin on my arms, pale,
sun-starved. I struggled to learn
the language of stillness, seedlings in a line,
but the allure of your garden is as alien
today as the first season you kissed the nape
of my neck and prayed for rain.
--LJCohen, 2008
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