I Prefer


My small side garden where
a cabbage butterfly plays chase
with its twin and the sun is
scalding the color out of the sky, where
the unpainted fence is brindled
with leafy, limbed shadows
the shrubs left behind.  Here the dull
clunk of the wooden wind-chimes and
the mumble of bees down deep purple
throats are music.  There are pots and beds
full of blackening compost and discarded
leaves and petals lay on the lawn.