0013 Pink Without Think Poem by Michael Shepherd

My friend the gardener who manages
to combine romantic or ex-romantic
with realist and fine poet and
loving gardener and teacher
and much else, harmoniously,

points out to me that the pink geranium
swinging gently in its hanging basket
in the late September sun, with
an effusive burst of flowering
which it alternates with exhausted,
barely green recovery and dry stalk,

puts on this display simply (simply!)
to attract insects to accidentally
(accidentally!) aid it to
propagate its species..

so I, who am nothing to it
except perhaps a passing Samaritan
who gives it water in a thirsty summer
and, perhaps irrelevantly, perhaps
from deeper cause,
received just now a shout
of pure pinkness from it so that
my senses thrilled, passed the message uncommented
to what seemed like my purest being,

am indeed attracted, my nature to that of it,
animal or human I’ll leave others to decide,
and from that vaguest of cosmic relevance
intend to see it through the winter
to the birth of Spring or spring of birth
with what - my gardener friend -
may well be love