revision

Aloud, I was remembering that yard, square
on the corner, how in the spring the rhubarb
sprang and in the same bed, weedy asparagus.
The volunteer peach tree. The garden
I planted, teeming with squash beetles
yet still I had some of everything I planted,

and for a summer, one summer, it was
nothing but those yellow roses that grew
in wild arcing canes, covered with flowers,
and a red rose, too, that grew, I kid you not,
at the front porch. Sleeping with nothing
but the screen door, it was so hot. Parties

with friends and laughing and butter cake.
It was an awful house, and I was so, so happy
then, I said, and believed it for just one second,
I was so happy to remember how happy I
had been, the baby in her striped shirts,
the walks we took around the block, the girls

from across the street coming over to play,
me picking tomatoes from the vine, and then
I also remembered the dark months that came
not long after that—same terrible house,
same heat but the next summer, and also
before that a cold winter when the air

was so grey I could barely see across the street.
I wanted to keep believing in that happiness,
the baby in her diaper standing under
the elm tree at the gate, me sitting on the porch
watching her, as if the still afternoon hour
had nothing to do but shimmer, as if I

had nothing to do but let the concrete’s
deep cool seep into the backs of my thighs.
As if the fruit on the vine had nothing to do
but fatten, the grass nothing but to tickle
the baby’s feet. And why should the fact
that I never learned how to make rhubarb

in any form I could stand, or the fact
that the yellow roses bloomed, rank and
florid, or that after the flowers withered,
there was nothing left but thorns: why should
these facts so absolutely abolish that summer,
its garden, the elm, the baby in its leafy shade?