THE BURYING BEETLE

I like to imagine even the plants

want attention, so I weed for four

hours straight, assuring the tomatoes

feel July’s hot breath on the neck,

the Japanese maple can stretch,

the sweet potatoes, the spider plants,

the Asiatic lilies can flourish in this

place we’ve dared to say we “own.”

Each nicked spindle of morning glory

or kudzu or purslane or yellow rocket

(Barbarea vulgaris for Christ’s sake),

and I find myself missing everyone I know.

I don’t know why. First come the piles

of nutsedge and creeper and then an

ache that fills the skin like the Cercospora

blight that’s killing the blue skyrocket juniper

slowly from the inside out. Sure, I know

what it is to be lonely, but today’s special

is a physical need to be touched by someone

decent, a pulsing palm to the back. My man

is in South Africa still, and people just keep

dying even when I try to pretend like they’re

not. The crown vetch and the curly dock

are almost eliminated as I survey the neatness

of my work. I don’t feel I deserve this time,

or the small plot of earth I get to mold into

someplace livable. I lost God awhile ago.

And I don’t want to pray, but I can picture

the plants deepening right now into the soil,

wanting to live, so I lie down among them,

in my ripped pink tank top, filthy and covered

in sweat, among red burying beetles and dirt

that’s been turned and turned like a problem

in the mind.