planting beauty

It’s not the way I usually would have done it

The apple tree sat waiting

In its plastic pot

Roots circling round and round

Without any room to breathe

I wanted ideal ground

But our “back 40” was less than so

Ground ridged by rocks and weeds

A pile of twisted rusty metal

neglected museum of days gone by

A heap of brush sprawled and sticky

like a shock of unkempt giant’s hair

A collection of broken glass, old medicine bottles

and the evidence of beer drunk in secret

A jumble of dirty plastic, torn and tattered

but never decomposing

I wanted to clear away all the ugliness first

Prepare a perfect environment for our darling sapling

A smooth lawn, a clear view, a clean start

But that was more than a few weeks’ worth of work away

I was almost loathe to do it

Behind the brush heap I pulled up weeds and grass

Collected more fragments of the last few decades

We dug a hole in the middle of it all

Sharp spade cutting into red clay

Filled it with rich, dark dirt harvested from the sea

And there

Surrounded by the brackish heaps

of our pioneer work in progress

We planted beauty

And there it blossoms even now

Unfurling roots and leaves, deep and high

Peeking over the giant’s mop top

Waving to the kitchen window

Happy only to be given a place

Yes, I will give up my stifling idealism

And give beauty a place to grow

~lg