Another freeze in the forecast,
though the beginning of planting season
passed two weeks ago. This year, winter hangs on.
Even the cotton farmers have long delayed their work.
Like a Greek putting my faith into capricious gods,
I anticipated the end of winter. I expected to release
something green and tender by now. Days ago, I bought
all the plants I could afford to get. But I was tricked.
So they sit in an open box and wait for better weather,
stretching toward my room’s one window.
While I’m at work I think of them, leaning hard
and silent toward a southwest square of light, reaching
to follow the beam that floats dust motes in little eddies of air.
At night, I leave the blinds open
so that I can be sure the leaves will catch all
of the rising sun, from the very first ray of it.
When I can’t sleep, I go to see the plants,
silent as tipping columns in the dark, in rows
of slanted architecture and closed gray buds,
the immense quiet of the blank black window
enveloping them in purgatorial stillness.
I read that they can’t metabolize starlight,
which is the wrong wavelength and lacking in intensity.
But it somehow seems best to let the night spill in,
and try to leave to them every advantage—
whether they lean to galaxies or to where the sun will rise,
as right as I can make them until I settle
them into the ground and shrug off
this one-sided responsibility of their patience.