A Milkweed Tale

We pay to have the scruffy yews

replaced by red elf coreopsis

and balloon flowers, the dwarf

variety, each cutting selected

for its sweet bee perfume, the whole

fenced in by fuschia-bright phlox.

It’s a good plan, well-researched

and weed-tended, until the morning

I spy a wild invader’s stalk, rising

like a Trojan horse with spine

so tall it quickly outpaces

the lame domesticated roots,

races upward, one foot, two, ten,

each leap a succulent invitation

to butterflies to ignore the tame

blossoms of soft, suburban plants,

to slip curated boundaries and sip

and sup and copulate in unbound

glory. The pods assume the height,

their seed-filled shells a brazen dare

to all wild things to sow where you

please and seize your own destiny.