morning glory

Adam's seeds are in my garden
uninvited.
Never shaken from a packet, purposeful
or folded damp in towels
for faster germination,

though busy, busy, they are unaware
of this neglect.
Spades in reverse, they show their faces
pointed tips and purple-white stems.

I am green but even I
can tell them from the seedlings.
Before they spread their leaves
I snap their necks

And feel I've won.

Tomorrow they return, unfazed,
brazen and with company.
But doesn't tomorrow always hold
trouble enough? I suppose,
and look down uneasy
at my clean cuticles.

I could have taken the time
the trouble
to sink my fingernails in earth,
unearthing dark below
the purple stems, the root.

I could have listened,
not for the snap but for the rend,
the groan of undoing
creature from creation.

Go away! you ill-named noose
on the neck of my blessing

Go curl in choke-holds
up abandoned fence posts.
Go suffocate the half-dead alders
on hills
that are better off sliding.
Take your false-white flowers to empty fields.

Not in my patch of earth and life,
where love is tended
tender
and growing under care.