Trellised

Trellised

The best yield the garden bore was before 

we soiled it with seed, before the natives 

became weeds because we didn't plant them 

there and the fence was yet stacked 

in lumber racks at the hardware store 

with a chance still at perfectly plumb. 

Our significant others, too, kept their figures 

firm as a fresh cucumber twenty years 

into our marriages before we met 

them, their priorities in prim rows 

well-tilled and running parallel to our own. 

The summers were never oppressively 

hot, the spouses were, and the houses rarely 

needed repair, till we—our very real 

bodies with their very real hungers

tiptoeing for the glint of it all at the top 

of the trellis—found the cardinal’s nest

among other tangles on which matter insists.