Honestly, I had no idea
you'd built new colonies,
slyly hidden underneath
the latest crop of weeds taking root
between the frost dividers
of our concrete driveway.

So I hope you'll pardon
the way the blades
of my hand-clippers tore
through your freeways and shopping-centres,
I'm sure killing many innocents
as this tornado swept through.

I certainly felt no joy
watching you scramble for dear life
in a hundred directions.

The next time we meet
I hope you won't be disturbed
or afraid if I watch the life
in the streets of your cities.

To The Ants In My Driveway by Raymond Souster collected in Close To Home

open.spotify.com/playlist/5feaGXyuAJH9Z63E9P7C7q

She kept three gardeners. Nevertheless, at night,
Her heart could hear the lopped vines crawling back
Over the lawn and up the gravel walk--
Could hear the fences groan with their looped wait,

And was afraid. By day she kept
The three men busy; clippers, mowers, rakes,
Helped her to keep the wilderness at bay.
But still at night she felt the grassy lakes

Put out new roots and move, the tender boughs
Of the cut hedges squirming out of line.
So, through the polished windows of her years,
She watched the sure collapse of her design,

Stared at the moon defeated, and grew cold
To learn at last how powerless she was.
For all her wealth, good manners, and defiance,
She lived alone in a surrounded house

And like the least of us grew old and weedy,
Felt her mind crumble like a wall of stones,
Heard the trees thicken as they stumbled toward her
And set their cracking weight upon her bones.

The Garden by Mary Oliver collected in The River Styx, Ohio

That hump of a man bunching chrysanthemums
Or pinching-back asters, or planting azaleas,
Tamping and stamping dirt into pots,--
How he could flick and pick
Rotten leaves or yellowy petals,
Or scoop out a weed close to flourishing roots,
Or make the dust buzz with a light spray,
Or drown a bug in one spit of tobacco juice,
Or fan life into wilted sweet-peas with his hat,
Or stand all night watering roses, his feet blue in rubber boots.
Old Florist from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

cf.
www.goodreads.com/list/show/77606.Nonfiction_Books_about_Plants
letterboxd.com/9413/list/i-think-the-devil-was-on-the-farm/
letterboxd.com/9413/list/i-want-to-be-in-a-tree-watching-you-watching/
letterboxd.com/9413/list/mycology-molds-moss-fungi-and-mushrooms/

I cut the seed and broke the stalk;
I split the leaf from crown to stem;
I tore the root and crushed the bloom
To strain the mystery out of them.

The frog was in my hands: I searched his beauty to the bones,
And worms I knifed, and creatures of the sea;
And feathers and the wind, rivers and rocks,
I opened to unfold their chemistry.

And out of books I learned a thousand names,
Habits and seasons of creatures and things that grow
Wild on the earth, until I thought there was
No fact of wilderness I did not know.

Thus was I taught, and put my books away,
And cool and casual in the early morning,
I stepped alone into the savage fields
Where Genesis assails me without warning.

Synthesis by Mary Oliver collected in No Voyage