I Love You Wildly
I Love You Wildly
Original Text
J. A. Hamilton, Steam Cleaning Love (Toronto: Brick Books, 1993): 52.
1The day is fat as an apple.
2Fulsome with sun, it's a day for a garden.
3My fingers tingle through their earthskins,
4though I am still indoors.
5My anticipating toes dart like mice,
6greedy for soil and air and light,
8These are the seedlings I need to bed:
9fuchsia, impatiens,
10companula, foxglove,
12giving them everything as I have given you --
13what?
14Sweet green heads,
15they are so innocent of autumn.
16I love you wildly
17from my green heart,
18which you say is woody,
19like a vine,
20rounding your ankles,
21twining up.
22Give me bone meal.
24You've pruned me back
25like an overzealous laurel,
26but I know secrets about fertilizers.
27I know roses love garlic.
28Together we are stronger;
29together we are two parts,
30two wholes, and something third,
31which is creation.
Notes
7] nematodes: primitive roundworms that make up 80 percent of earth's living things, some species of which are pests infecting garden plants. Back to Line
11] Flowers whose names suggest what often happens in bed. Back to Line
23] 18-12-24: a nitrogen-phosphorus-potash fertilizer. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2013
Rhyme
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Special Copyright
© Jane Eaton Hamilton, from whom permission to republish must be obtained in writing.