Urszula’s Garden
          for Urszula Koziol

Power-plant nearby, cemetery, perfume of flowers
locked into the air. Zombies could walk here right through
the gate at night, pick the daffodils, eat the lettuce,
lounge under the fruit trees. The mildew on their sleeves
sleep-drops from the moon watering the petals of the flowers.

Urszula comes here during the day, dressed in black
for the bones peopled in the open ditch in the park.
She carries a knife for digging the rows, she carries
seeds from some secret society of seeds, and waters
the plants, her violet sleeves like an I.V. connecting
her to the earth. Toward the park the wastecans bear
the inscription, “transformer”, but this beautiful ladybug
of a poet brings the rain, transforms the rude power
behind these plants into the rush hour of their short season.

I imagine the Zombies, having had their fill, setting down
to a game of chess at the chess-set set in stone
in the park. I imagine they have their own secret society,
that they drink the bloody wine of bones and roots by day,
and exchange the wisdom of their years at night between
Urszula’s garden and the cemetery. I can hear their discussions
about the constellations---each star in the Milky Way
once a blossom here on earth. Or is it the other way,
each blossom here on earth once a star bursting with milk.

Not a landmine underfoot. Just these landscaped transformers,
the dead, the living, the power plant with the birds
on the wires, the berries in the birds’ stomachs and trees.
At night clouds cross out the face of the moon. Urszula sits
in her living room, fatback and cabbage cooking in the kitchen,
bread and vodka on the table, a vase of yellow flowers,
a salad with lettuce and tomatoes. I was a guest
in that house in Wroclow along the Oder River.
We are all guests here on this earth. Let’s drink to that.