Garden Plot

PHYLLIS
Come, leave your tools, those blades and hoses.
There have been daisies, will be roses,
Whether you feed and clip and spray.
Sufficient flowers strew the day
In which we laugh, while overhead
The sun approves when clouds are bred;
Gather you hoses: now I stay.
Tomorrow I may be away.

CORYDON
You will be gone, like every she
Of every plant and every me.
Each flower fades; no flower cares,
Caught by the frost and unawares
That frost took Mom and Pop and Sis,
Took first that neighbor, then plucked this,
And will take you. As well you know.
If you must leave, well, all must go.
I shall come later. Come I will.
A garden grows where we keep still.

PHYLL.
You unappreciating drone.
If I be gone, and you alone,
I’ll find a mate who strokes and clucks.
Your hand is empty. When it plucks
A rose, the rose dissolves. The dew
Runs by your fingertips. Me too.

CORY.
Alone God made the gardener first,
His rising state, and not his worst.
I’ve been alone with these before,
Not less with you. Not any more.
If you push on, then I must turn
The water on. My roses burn.

PHYLL.
O little man, you spray too much.
Kid gauntlets on, you lose your touch.
Plants love like us; earth claims us all:
Rise with the spring, in autumn, fall.
You’ll make a fine mulch, fat and pure:
But love comes late, and death is sure.
Come straight inside: be quick, be bent.

CORY.
The roses speak: I hear the scent;
And I shall come before I go.

PHYLL.
How sweet the prick

CORY.
When roses blow.