August 2018
David Southward
southwd@uwm.edu
southwd@uwm.edu
Since 1998 I have taught literature, film, and comics in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I’ve only been writing poetry in earnest since 2011, mostly in traditional forms. My first collection--Apocrypha, a sonnet sequence based on the Gospels—is due out from Wipf & Stock any day. When I’m not teaching or writing I enjoy dinner parties, foreign films, gardening, and taking long walks with my husband, Geoff, and our beagle, Sammy. To learn more about my work visit www.davidsouthward.com.
Bachelor’s Buttons
I waited for a garden god
to show me where to tear the sod,
but grew impatient, once I saw
my garden had no border law.
In virgin beds that hugged the fence
I carried out experiments
to see which cultivated guest
would flourish in the plain Midwest.
I tried the princely, spiraled rose
and watched it blacken as it froze.
My calloused greeting proved too chilly
for the righteous Easter lily.
Sickened by their own perfume,
my hyacinths would droop too soon;
the green hydrangeas had no clue
how to achieve their promised blue.
Accepting the mistakes one makes
before a transplant fully takes,
while trying to regain the ease
of nature within boundaries,
I saw the bachelor’s buttons crop
up by surprise—and blue buds pop
like cufflink studs, with purple eyes
that met the fire of the sky’s
and drank from roots now just as deep
as promises a man can keep.
first appeared in The Lyric
Bachelor’s Buttons
I waited for a garden god
to show me where to tear the sod,
but grew impatient, once I saw
my garden had no border law.
In virgin beds that hugged the fence
I carried out experiments
to see which cultivated guest
would flourish in the plain Midwest.
I tried the princely, spiraled rose
and watched it blacken as it froze.
My calloused greeting proved too chilly
for the righteous Easter lily.
Sickened by their own perfume,
my hyacinths would droop too soon;
the green hydrangeas had no clue
how to achieve their promised blue.
Accepting the mistakes one makes
before a transplant fully takes,
while trying to regain the ease
of nature within boundaries,
I saw the bachelor’s buttons crop
up by surprise—and blue buds pop
like cufflink studs, with purple eyes
that met the fire of the sky’s
and drank from roots now just as deep
as promises a man can keep.
first appeared in The Lyric
©2018 David Southward
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