GARDENER’S REMORSE - Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

GARDENER’S REMORSE
 
The garden looked better with that plant gone.
I had pulled the twisted thing up! 
Roots and all were now in the street.
It was just all wrong I thought.
Wrong.  Really wrong from the very first day.
 
I had searched and shopped for the scrubby thing.
“A plant perfect for the drought,” the salesman said.
“Slow growing, light or shade, hardy in all climates,
can withstand high heat and low water.”
 
It wasn’t attractive that first day but those were dry times in ’88
in my few square feet of California.
Like an arranged marriage, I might learn to love this strange cross
between a mutant bonsai cypress
and a poison berry bush from a Disney cartoon.
 
Three drought years had gone by and one blessed wet one
and that miserable plant still occupied
its almost hallowed ground in my garden.
It seemed an unwelcome peace keeper
separating the exploding South African Gazanias
from the radiant Icelandic poppies.
 
If it weren’t for its miniscule faded pink blossoms
(pink like the tiny shy flowers on an old doll’s dress)
and if it weren’t for its miniature berries
(that even the sparrows avoided)
and if it weren’t for its seeds looking like crushed
wheat germ kernels on the kitchen floor
I’d say the ugly thing hadn’t moved a cell in four years.
Slow growing?  Well, I guess!
 
I pulled the damn thing up without a tinge of remorse.
Good riddance I thought, to be done with old ugly.
The next day, pondering the cleared spot in the garden,
I heard a voice that had been dead for many years.
“Oh, Dougie, you pulled up a slow growing plant?
How would you like it if someone did that to you?”
 
          - Doug von Koss
 
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