The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants by Renee Emerson

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Backyard Sabbath

The door to the porch hangs open
in this weather, inviting our children
and resident carpenter bees to drift
lazily in and out. A trail of cut crabgrass

chicken-scratched across the floor
from bare feet running to the sink—
because they need water for their own
complicated structures. Today,

digging for worms, pulled writhing
from the dirt. They chase each other
with them, threaten to add a slimy tress
to sister’s hair, toothless Medusa.

At last, we have all been told to stay home.
Everyone begins to trust
garden dirt on their hands, to fear
another’s touch, another’s breath.

I can tell you, they trust too much.
In our house in Arkansas, Black Widow
spiders webbed the corners of each window
and door frame, every exit wreathed

with poison. The coyotes, laughing
like children, ate our housecats
when they slipped out the door. It’s easy
to believe people are the hazards,

that God’s good earth can only give
us safe things. Indifferent, the soil
flakes on the hands of the playing child,
flakes on the hands of the dead.

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