no stranger to this, and then some slight return

The language of flowers glows with light
Around the cradled hands of mysterious women
Sowing petals of thought with green thumbs
Wrapped around fuzzy vines glistening with
Diamond drops of dew, intertwining their arms
To the center of the Earth with coded demarcations.

And the engine of depravity reaps dead petals,
Its gears gorge upon decay but choke and have
To be redesigned every time a machine part breaks.

This is the reality of gardening, love tenderly
Escorts petals into brilliant swatches of paint
Played out towards the sky while the dull mechanics
Of corporate farmers mangle utility plants until
Profit is lost, until their engines rust with oil flakes
And water decomposes even the most extensively
Engineered part, like a frail ally burning the teeth
Of gears in a combine.

My lady curls with unfurling magnolias and has
Wrapped a bouquet of forget-me-nots around
Where my crown used to lie, once heavy and sullen
With dead metal. Garlands are more sensible
For summer, she told me, crowns are endless winter
Locked in sharp perfume.

And the snakes will lie among the rosebushes,
Searching out immortality amid confused
Significations, because after all
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose;
Few people understand that, and snakes
Certainly don’t understand anything which
Is why one lived in a tree in the Garden of Eden,
Only a confused scaly wraith would live where
Branches blend fruit into quiet mouths awed
With the power of taste, eyes awed with pulsating
Flowers blooming and billowing in the sharp
Sunlight that tells us about colors,
While snakes, they know no color beyond
Vibration, much like certain scientists.

And the eloquent gardens speak in languages
You can’t count on your ear to hear, my lady
She whispers names into my hair like a bird
Tying bows of peonies into the tangled weave
Of my feral mane.