By Lee Herrick
How much delight before we collapse
How much earth in the lungs
How much wine
When we want more
When the weeds sprawl
It is not what you think
Think how fast some landscapes change
the lover, the gardener’s grand idea,
the failing Maple
the boat about to capsize
the correction
the hand’s reflection
the impossible replication of weight
versus time
how it will never mean what you want
Lee Herrick, "The Impossible Replication of Desire" from Gardening Secrets of the Dead, published by WordTech Communications LLC. Copyright © 2012 by Lee Herrick. Reprinted by permission of Lee Herrick.
Source: Gardening Secrets of the Dead (WordTech Communications, 2012)
Poet Bio
More Poems about Living
Grain Memory
A wishbone branch falls
from my Grandma Thelma’s oak
for me.
What do you know about magic? e1 asks.
E bends e old body down, turns
the wishbone branch into
a cross, places it around my neck.
I am strapped at the Black River’s right shoulder,
remembering my...
Another Antipastoral
I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.
My mouthful of grass.
My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.
There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I...
More Poems about Love
the world is about to end and my grandparents are in love
still, living like they orbit one another,
my grandfather, the planet, & grandma, his moon assigned
by some gravitational pull. they have loved long enough
for a working man to retire. grandma says she’s not tired,
she...
Ars Poetica
Migration is derived from the word “migrate,” which is a verb defined by Merriam-Webster as “to move from one country, place, or locality to another.” Plot twist: migration never ends. My parents moved from Jalisco, México to Chicago in 1987....
More Poems about Nature
Another Antipastoral
I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.
My mouthful of grass.
My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.
There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I...
Whenever you see a tree
Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to...