I discover it’s not so easy
to get better with age. I want
the slow drift into grace, but find
a back more bent, a narrower
gaze. A friend’s elderly boxer
has a huge tumor on his heart—
a sick way for time to amass.
Age harder to face, I blame
all the times we’ve moved, claim
we grow strong in the same soil—
that each uprooting thins lymph,
turns it a little more bitter. In
“Sheltered Garden” H. D. warns
against borders of soft pinks, insists
on half-trees, torn, twisted, the
glorious resistance of broken
pear and quince—no beauty
without strength. What if
she’s right? If each transplant
shed my pink stalks, their spiced
heads—tortured branches to release
their resin breath instead. If ripped
roots and windburned bark—all
our scars—are the new beauty
of a stripped and borderless place.