In another life I’ll let the overgrowth
grow over me, once in a while
not pass the afternoon hedge clipping.
Come to think of it, maybe I’ll not
keep a hedge, nor hedge my bets
not live so much in parenthesis.
I’ll study the passions and subtleties of weeds,
make new terms with earth, its terrors.
No longer now the neighbourhood boast
and envy, who once could keep so straight
a line, so spirit level through murrayea
and privet, fastidious worrier at the edges
of things, Blake’s “tame high finisher
of paltry blots and sundry paltry rhymes.”
Neighbourhood dogs will take back to their mistresses’
drawing rooms reports of strange sightings:
a wild man laughing through the overgrowth.

~ Edward Baugh