©2014 by Jack Andrew Urquhart

People say the damnedest things,
people meaning, you, of course—
say you can’t stand your mother,
whose definition of trauma
is a frizzled permanent wave.

Say that your children’s lunacy
makes of you a mental slave,
that their pecuniary dramas
bore you to bankruptcy.

Say you’d like to weed them—
these bush-league blossoms—
from the rose garden
of your verdant dreams.

Say anything, in fact,
to blunt the prick and prickle
of these thorns in your side.

You don’t say
truth, of course:
that love is petulant
as a posy,
flagging and flowering
to the whims                                                           of temperamental climate;
that devotion can be cruel
and constant,
one day nurturing as a spring shower,
all drought and idle threats
the next.

You don’t say
the worst is complete conceit,
not a ghost of a chance
you’d follow through.

And so, your words
come back to haunt you—
every shade of hubris
every bald-face lie.

You don’t say
it serves you right,
damn fool!

To think that you
could make a master gardener,
to think that you
(of all people!)
could coax bouquets
from a briar patch.

            ***