all the flowers in the wild garden
have yielded their spirits to autumn’s chill
and become dry brown ghosts, their seeds
falling out of cracked heads and cones
down to the hardening ground in hopes
that something will take root for spring
they don’t know that some fine day
we plan to strip the soil bare and start again
enlarging the borders and ordering the brilliant chaos
for now, fennel is all that remains greening
its feathery fronds sprawling from stalks knocked askew
and the bulbs growing vast against the cold
perhaps tomorrow i will dig them up
and we will feast like swallowtail caterpillars in summer
