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    • May 2013

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I leave the formal garden of schedules

where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs

of thought, and day after day, a boxwood

topiary hunt chases a green fox

never caught. No voice calls me to order

as I enter a dream of meadow, kneel

to earth and, moving east to west, second

the motion only of the sun. I plant

frail seedlings in the unplowed field, trusting

the wildness hidden in their hearts. Spring light

sprawls across false indigo and hyssop,

daisies, flax. Clouds form, dissolve, withhold

or promise rain. In time, outside of time,

the unkempt afternoons fill up with flowers.

Source: Poetry (May 2001).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the May 2001 issue of Poetry magazine

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• Under Water Casket
  by Allison Funk
• Sunrise
  by Carl Dennis
• Snakeskin
  by Liz Beasely

• May 2001 Table of Contents
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More about this poem

Biography

Mary Makofske attended Douglass College and the University of Minnesota, where she earned an M.A. in English. Her two books are The Disappearance of Gargoyles (Thorntree Press, 1988) and Eating Nasturtiums (Flume, 1998). She has won several awards, including the Robert Penn Warren Prize from the Cumberland Review.

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Gardening, Activities

Poetic Terms Metaphor, Blank Verse

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