When you’ve gone, it won’t matter to the musk rose
twining the old trellis over the eaves. Willow 
will continue to pour its yellow-green waterfall 

next to forsythia, one half-tone better on the scale
of bright, and white jonquil spinnakers will sail 
their acre of regatta

past hyssop’s rising pale flower foam. It will 
crest and subside and weave a sweet mat 
to bear the thick blanket of snow 

and none of it matters. Not how you loved it, not 
how you knelt in each dark December plot 
to part the rich plait, reached

through the wither of winter to find something born
of the decay of all that was young once, 
something still growing and green.