Little megaphones, we hang out in the garden center and gossip with the petunias three seasons a year. With leaves too small to resemble thumbs or hands or hearts, too soft for any parts of our threadable stems to grow thorns, we prefer to pretend we are horns, cornets and alto sax, prepared to assemble in studios and sightread any charts. We are of course for sale to generous homes. Some of us have become almost overfamiliar with ornamental cabbage, with the ins and outs of kale. Others have lost our voice in a painstaking effort to justify our existence as a perennial second choice. Like you, we dismiss whatever comes easiest to us and overestimate what looks hard. In our case that means we admire our neighbors’ luxuriant spontaneities and treat the most patient preparers with disregard. We strive for contentment in our hanging baskets once we know we will not touch ground. We tell ourselves and one another that if you listen with sufficient generosity, you will be able to hear our distinctive and natural sound.
Poem of the day: September 6, 2016 White Lobelia // Stephen Burt