Little Green Wonderland

A prompted poem on permanence

Copyright by Jenine Bsharah Baines

Like a stray grey kitten
by the side of the road,
you mew at me.
My sweet sad succulent,
torn from your mother,
how can I not bring you home

for a long soak and blast after blast
of defibrillation from the tap
in a tub of soil?

Your grey turns ghastly.
You are flatlining.
I mourn.

I persist.

One morning, a faint wash
of green appears.
A trick of light? Denial?
Magical thinking?

I persist

in thinking magic
never died.

Today, your mew is a belly laugh.
You’re enlightened.
A jolly jade Buddha.
Christ in the tips,
every spring,
of a peach tree’s branches.

Little green wonderland,
I’m in awe.
When I’m gone,
and this garden is someone else’s
and someone else’s after that,
you’ll yet be here — waiting…