Eden

Schoolyard

Miss Paulette Fox-Trotter
lived next to the elementary school
in a big white house.
Her lawn was wider, and grassier,
and cooler, and shadier
than any other yard in town,
most likely because of the
tall chain link fence
surrounding it.

She tended her story-book garden
with hard sharp objects,
pruning with impunity, with
her ruthless eye for beauty,
the shrubbery that spread its longing
spindly fingers toward the sun
Her rake tore through tangled
brown winter grass-- a mother
brushing the hair of a
recalcitrant child. She cut
in a frenzy of clippings,
hair wild under her hat, feet
green and bare in the grass.

No brazen fingers ever stretched
through the chain link to pluck
petals from the friendship roses,
and balls bounced over the fence
were simply lost in that regimented
land forever.