Miracle-Gro

Miracle-Gro

If you water the plant
and put it in the sun,
it will live, unless
it dies. Because

why. Because it does,
because biology
is not allegorical
until we speak

of it. In high school
Bio, we’d lower
our faces to
microscopes,

one eye pressed into
the lens, its eye
socket. Xylem,
we were supposed

to say, or phloem.
Xylem is dead,
our teacher said,
so the plant drinks

with parts that are
dead. I’m no good
in the garden. My
one tomato plant

produced only one
flower. One tomato
grew from it, like
a balloon with its

mouth wrapped
round a running
tap, but when I
went to pick it,

no tomato. Squirrels,
everyone said, and I
pictured one squirrel
holding the tomato

in its tiny arms,
another peering out
from a pine, holding
the needles open

like a curtain, and
waving to his friend,
hurry, hurry. It is
ridiculous, all of it,

the squirrels and hoses
and watering cans,
and Miracle-Gro
and biology, the logy

of life. Don’t die, we
command our plants,
and they laugh and
laugh at us after they do.