Seven forty-six a.m. and a motorcycle scars our empty road. The crickets’ legs still strong enough to mute an eastern towhee. Coffee today, then? The gardener withholds his answer, it is understood.
The begonia cutting V took shares a glass with a buddleja I conveniently forget, sometimes to enjoy it, knowing it requires escape. Tradescantia pallida rules the shot glass to its left. There’s a scratch I believe is an open wound.
Crickets turn into engines. Engines, to coffee. Coffee to a helicopter raked across the windowsill. Landscapers down the hill begin. Impetuous as bees.
This hour is fig musk and robins mobbing the yard. Is a whiff of smoke from a neighbor’s sheltered stoop, with the fragrance of Osmanthus in restraint. Is eighty-three percent humidity. See: “Georgia”, “humid subtropical”. See: house finch at the x of crossing power lines. A female cardinal calls to water. Later, three young goldenrods will claim an inch from open air. The state will execute a Black man in Missouri. In the time it takes to pass a traffic light.
The gardener’s head is in his hands. As if I could re-sheathe myself, retract a flower from this heavy-scissored world.