All winter these troops
muster under the loam.
Only just now blades rising
above the grass threatening
the air against the day
the first blooms loll above
a thicket of knives unfurling
blues no sky could concoct.

My grandmother grew them
along the narrow strip
against the hedge. For
a few weeks, slender and
tall as the window of
her husband’s Oldsmobile,
they nodded him off to work
and back—all the way
down the long drive home.