Early June Morning

I’m not one to:
get up.
grab a cup of Joe, and
go to the table to
gather myself around a newspaper,

I’d rather
go outside and feel poetry, think about
Guatemala and the thirteen year old
girl there who loves me for the hope I
give here daily.

For me, she promises to protect,
generally, two things: her body,
given the fact that is becoming a woman;
guarding her brain, a vacuum, sucking in all things
great or small that surround her.

On this morning, I water a small
garden of eight potato plants,
seven tomato plants, and tulips
gone dormant to produce
bulbs.

I pull crabgrass from an American Chestnut,
gravely endangered, seedling,
one of twelve seeds to sprout. It is more
fragile than Dayana, the young
Guatemala girl who cultivates her own

garden with seeds of hope.