Beside my house I have a plot,
A garden, though a garden not
As you’d suspect — I do not grow
The gardener’s portfolio;
But wildflowers, those will do,
In little clumps, like meadow rue
That I arranged the way I’d seen
Them growing in the evergreen.
The summer first I planted them,
A heavy rain had beat the stems
And they had died. The second one,
I tended them until the rain was done,
But later, seeing dying leaves I rushed
To change the fate — I couldn’t much
But witness how the flowers bent
Toward the earth, as toward the earth they went.
Wild plants are undisturbed by men,
But all is tended in a garden.
— I sowed meadow rue here. — So when
The spring comes, let return again
The little stems of fluted leaves,
As just the same the evergreen receives,
And tends them not, but lets alone
The meadow rue to tend its own.
I cannot tend the meadow rue —
It is not mine, and never mine to
Be; though harder still it is, I find,
To tend alone the worried mind
That wonders if, when I will die,
And in the evergreen I lie,
The meadow rue will tend the rest
In wildflower gardens on my chest.