Last August Hours Before The Year 2000

Spun silk of mercy, long-limbed afternoon, sun urging purple blossoms from baked stems. What better blessing than to move without hurry under trees? Lugging a bucket to the rose that became a twining house by now, roof and walls of vine— you could live inside this rose. Pouring a slow stream around the ancient pineapple crowned with spiky fruit, I thought we would feel old by the year 2000. Walt Disney thought cars would fly. What a drama to keep thinking the last summer the last birthday before the calendar turns to zeroes. My neighbor says anything we plant in September takes hold. She’s lining pots of little grasses by her walk. I want to know the root goes deep on all that came before, you could lay a soaker hose across your whole life and know there was something under layers of packed summer earth and dry blown grass to moisten.