When i was 95, a lady named Rhododendron moved in to a house down the street from my old place. She was a gentle soul and she made peppermint soap in her basement.
She kept a peanut brittle mailbox and a brown flower couch.
She drank peppermint pop in the lemongrass patch and hollered at the moon.
It's true that I learned of the plant ways from her.
In the summer, I crashed my bicycle into her fence.

a beautiful tree grew out of that wreck.

We spoke on her lawn for the first time.
We were crying.

Her past was a flooded mineshaft
singing and swimming
to stay alive.
I was a welder's word
sharpening shark teeth
to bite myself to death with.

I built her a plastic swan lamp.
It was rather magnificent
and it marks the beginning of
our love affair.

The swan seemed happy.

But on it's eighth birthday, it
ran away from home.

We weren't really sad.

Plastic swan lamp
moved out of the river
into a swamp.
Swan lamp slept in the
bell of an enormous flower.
Hearty eagle-racoons
arrived with a flaming
declaration of peace.
Plastic swan lamp built
a radio
for flower.

swan and flower

swamp boggle
a red bird's map
couldn't navigate

an egg tariff has been proposed!

i was encased in a bubbling mass of blue hydrangeas
which killed me in an agreeable way.