Fall’s descent
requires me to write
like God
in The Book of Life
which shall live
and which shall die.
Do I choose
the New Guinea impatien
that I have nurtured all summer
from its infant days
as a one-stemmed seedling
to its now-mounded ripeness
well past teenager-hood,
a full-breasted
marriageable beauty?
Or the shameless
hibiscus
that struts her crepey tart-orange blooms
opening herself to every day
with sure-rooted womanly confidence?
Or the variegated coleus
that could be tested
for steroid use
she has grown so spectacularly tall?
The ark is just
not big enough
to bring them all aboard.
Yet all are worthy,
at the peak of their lives
should be saved.
On this Yom Kippur-like
day of reckoning
for potted garden plants,
this erev when temperatures
will touch
the point of no return,
freezing arteries
that have faithfully carried
earthy sustenance
to gloriously blushed blossoms,
do I imagine those angels’ trumpets
davening minkhah
as the cold wind picks up:
Imeinu Malkateinu
our mother our queen
inscribe us in The Book of Life?
