A right curious thing,
pale little girl in the garden
she was told to avoid.
She plays in a dark ring
of lost broken scattered rosies
patting the earth like a
gardener at her work.
Sporting crusty worn gloves she found
overturning clay pots.
Steps where the thistles lurk
but time and time again never
nurses a single scar.
Sporting murky aged boots
that bring her knee high luck, it seems.
Pouncing after all the
small speckle poison newts,
peeping fragile spider frogs and
grass snakes that bite the mist.
She has stumbled upon
a new treasure as she skips stones
over a frozen pond;
a remnant of eon
lost from human memory for
a universe of time,
and such dark time at that.
A sprout. It grows from a sliver,
a black crack in the ice.
Stem is thin, thorns are fat,
no bud is left on its grey hide,
textured with spikes of frost,
three inches tall, curling
at the tip in a tight spiral,
thick wormy roots piercing
deep in dirt, unfurling
in the most cunning fashion when
her keen gaze lands on it.
"A right curious thing!"
pale little girl in the garden
exclaims with soft gloved hands
outstretched. She aims to bring
the tiny flowerpot and its
right curious cargo
to her favorite patch
of secrets. Once it was bare but
she's claimed the sorrowful
soil with a cream batch
of snowdrops, forget-me-nots, and
blooming daffodils. She
lifts the demonic sprout
to the dim clouds with clear pure pride,
fingers cupped around the
base. "Shall I lift you out?"
she giggles to the evil bloom.
"Give you a brand new home
much less crowded," she says
promisingly. In the strange
weary wind, in the whites
and ever-present grays,
the sprout tastes opportunity.
It trembles with black joy.
