it’s hard at first to comprehend the sleeping man
so horizontal all through the day so sleepy
despite the hours spent seemingly at rest
but like a meadow glimpsed from speeding train of course
there are permanent convulsions
beneath the topsoil of your matted hair love what horses
are at work on you saddled with the twin desires
to get better and be dead how loud they are
how heavy how patient as they sit at either end
of your repose body stretching to its limits
and your head and feet tied up to them
as they toss their flyscabbed manes towards the ceiling
that whinnying that always sounds like laughter
as you put your hands to your ears someone shouts out
pull
how many evenings have I thought the garden done walked out and seen fresh clumps of weed mithering the dirt some people cannot tell the difference between what should be there and not I’m one of them ignorant ’til one thing overgrows another or gets choked there is always something needing to be tended a small salvage down in the muck I’ve grown to think if I go out at night I might catch them at it but the soil lays still beneath a harvest moon that is the size of your sadness and growing waxing until its whole face peers over at our house pockmarked skin like a ploughed field picked clean of all its crops still you will not come outside
love forgive me most of the time I can’t see the borders of the garden for the trees can’t tell plant from weed I didn’t know how best to save you from yourself how to lead your mind back up the path to the house of itself I was gone too much and didn’t know whether it was best to let you sleep or take you for a walk or let you sit in silence or encourage you to talk those years love were like trying to sift armfuls of soil for the tiniest of seeds and yes sometimes I wanted to split and scatter sometimes I couldn’t stand the screaming anymore more things survive in the garden now the more weeds come down the more the roses open up their clenched faces