The neighbors look
black & white, their views
on socially acceptable
yards like chess boards mating
Valspar paint swatches
to green.

You’ve got to go, they say—
your dandelions catching
the wind, warning joggers
to step farther off the sidewalk—
your backside a pit
filled with abandoned
branches like soldiers—fallen
beside the bodies of rabbits, moles, birds
either too slow to escape feral cats
or rooting for worms, for food, forgetting
there is city on the other side
of our sacred. 

You’re overgrown, they say—
as they man their machines,
rev their tools, sweat their lives
away into cuffs and collars

they can’t see. 

You’re perfect, my love—
here, where I sit, where I write
from the deck, hearing your buzz like bees—
your breaths like electricity and wasps—
the march of blood in your veins like ants—
so much that is alive, so much that
I’m alive—the green and gold of you
drawn in like amber waves, when I inhale—
pulsing, igniting, when I exhale—

and I no more want to touch that machine
than I wish to thresh the fire
from the stars that appear
in our night sky

while the sleepers sleep.