In My Grandmother’s Garden

Under the lemon leaves I went to ground.

Headless fuchsias danced en pointe,
mad hibiscus spoke to me in tongues.

At evening, unharried to bath or table,
I snail-tracked in to bed a glamour of rotting leaves
and fell to darkness, unafraid.

No motherly earwig came whispering
and sucking at the brain,

no potato bug scrabbled beside the bed,
weeping and wringing her claws

though they crawled at night
from the garage’s pale belly.
 
The summers floated like motes at midday,
but always they ended.
I hid in the jacaranda, or deep among orange thorns –

once, under the terrible garage.
Each year I was taken for pruning.

I wonder how I might have rooted, had I stayed.