Out Back
The ferns, mint, foxglove, and tall grass
growing every whichway behind the kitchen
surpass anything I could say
about them. And the purple vetch
I pulled out yesterday—
perhaps I was wrong to think
it was strangling the others;
it might just as well have been
binding them all together …
though here I could be making yet
another mistake. Better to let them
all be, to take of them freely
by other means and without
much remark, the way the wind
bends and jostles the ferns,
and the bumblebees and moths
visit the last pink bells at the tops
of the swaying foxglove stalks.
Jeffrey Harrison is the author of six books of poetry, including, most recently, Between Lakes (Four Way Books, 2020) and Into Daylight (Tupelo Press, 2014), winner of the Dorset Prize. Read more.
“Out Back” originally appeared in Into Daylight, © 2014 by Jeffrey Harrison, Tupelo Press.