Squirrel Flats Band

Lyrics

1. Gardening, like writing poetry, is a solitary pursuit.
2. All people who talk to themselves are not crazy- some of us are poets.
-Author
have you ever noticed how a daylily stem
(when you aren't looking)
grows about six inches taller and makes a bud that wasn't there
but only when you're not looking,
and then when you come back a little later, the bud has opened?

or how a peony bud is just about to open
and so you stare at it, thinking it will open while you watch
but it won't, not as long as you keep watching--
and then you come back later and just one pedal has loosened?
and so you stare some more and it just sits there laughing at you
so you go and do something else and come back
and it's full-on blooming, big as a cabbage?

do you wonder then if you had just kept staring
whether it would have sat there looking back at you
until, just out of pure stubbornness and spite, it died?
or maybe it was just playing.

sometimes I watch the clematis vines, imagining I can watch them climb
like time-lapsed photography, right there in front of me,
and I can watch their buds becoming plump and ripe
and they will open while I watch, into perfect purple pinwheels
like an animated cartoon.
but sometimes the joke is just better.

and don't even get me started on robin's eggs.