K. ALMA PETERSON

Growing Season

In our limber heyday- - - we fled the sylvan boondocks,
cone and catkin - - - good life, my eye - - - enough already

of revitalized downtown - - - yonder looms the church - - -
or warehouse - - - you tell me - - pushing out

and out into the meadow - - - ousting cattails and sweet-
faced daisies - - - small town feel, my foot - - -

ministers with plastered grins tend their luxuriant copse - - -
sunflowers lord it over the very daisies they resemble - - -

Still in the black, we drove in gloved amusement - - - I held
my swoon imagining the shiny me-clasp - - - your undoing - - -

thought of waking - - - endorphins in a pout - -
to the churlish whir of insects - - - bickering about

the gentle life that flowers lead - - - we buy them dried,
and drink them - - - bagged and steeped - - -