You Must Never Mention Nature (If You Want To Get Ahead)

You borders, mad with better
Homes and gardens, what do
You know of the angry style
Of riot in our backyard pen?

Gorged on flowers, compost
Heaps, and pillows, which wall-eyed
Bower among you strikes a single blow
For the tanged rot of petal

Where your wealth is weighed?
Ministers of perfume, tape, and
Trowel, fattened on the rape of land,
Who in heaven made

You slide near this earthy roadside stand,
This harbor where the berries
Wash in tides of ardor
Over wood's informal mess?

And you, the neatest
Trellises of adverse
Ground, why this hedging,
Why avoid the honest

Fruit of what is left us
In the landfill of the grass,
Why focus on the stylish
And bury all the rest?

Is there too much danger
In the woodpile for the rolled
And planted lawn, little gain for
Artists in a land as good as sold,

Where the syllables of plenty
Drown out what is not
Arranged in rows of twenty
And edited from sod?

Is the old swamp too poetic
For the tulips' hothouse sweat?
If the earth is dusty, let it
Wallow in the sprinkler's debt

For words, for all the best
Of plants, my dear, are dull,
As one bird's simple nest
Embroiders universal

Borders on an opening,
Edging fences on its ghetto
Out of string; it's no Rialto,
But this is where it sings.

February 1st, 1986