Dirt Like Dust
There is ruin where the garden once grew. Stones displaced, cast aside. Sodden leaves and the stems of long grasses, browned by frost, lie in haphazard piles—half mulched. The tree stump where the cat preened in the sun is barren, the green that grew up over it—sweet cucumber—is now a thing of memory. The earth looks rich under the snow (we know it's really dust), but the sticks that once held up the peppers are all fallen over and sideways, as though blown by the Nebraska winds. I will not be here to see the greening, to fight the endless battle with the ants, to wake to birdsong and fret about the babies in the nest. I will be elsewhere, displaced like any other stone that once formed a path into the garden, and no butterflies will dance upon the cosmos, when summer comes.