Perennial
       

When you've gone, it won't matter to the musk rose
twining the old trellis over the eaves. Willow
will continue to pour her yellow-green waterfall

next to forsythia, one half tone better on the scale
of bright, and white jonquil spinnakers will sail
their acre of regatta

past hyssop's rising pale flower foam. It will
crest and subside and weave a sweet mat
to bear the thick blanket of snow,

and none of it matters. Not how you loved it, not
how you knelt in each dark December plot
to part the rich plait, reached

through the wither of winter to find something born
of the decay of all that was young once,
something still growing and green.

Copyright © 2010 Rebecca Foust All rights reserved
from God, Seed
Tebot Bach
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission