Heaven For Stanley

For his birthday, I gave Stanley a hyacinth bean, an annual, so he wouldn't have to wait for the flowers. He said, Mark, I have just the place for it! as if he'd spent ninety-eight years anticipating the arrival of this particular vine. I thought poetry a brace against time, the hours held up for study in a voice's cool saline, but his allegiance is not to permanent forms. His garden's all furious change, budding and rot and then the coming up again; why prefer any single part of the round? I don't know that he'd change a word of it; I think he could be forever pleased to participate in motion. Something opens. He writes it down. Heaven steadies and concentrates near the lavender. He's already there.