By the end I would say
I'd known from the beginning
the way rain surely knows
it will momentarily bead on a leaf
only to slip from its tip and
shatter like crystal into
a million little pieces.

In the early days when our world
rose-blushed-pink the air heavy
with scented blooms I didn’t
think so much of these things
although perhaps it was all pretend
and like the rain I learned to live with
the inevitability of all I didn’t know.

Each year the creeping plant
in the front continued to grow—
I forget its name but it’s the one with
deep-purple leaves that pushes
out of the soil and spreads across
the entire path, an insidious vine
the one your mother helped me plant
the first spring we owned the house.

She and I toiled on that slope
dug clumps of weeds, excavated
small rocks, the dirt and gravel
sharp under our nail beds.
Our common goal to grow beauty,
usher a white picket fence around
the secrets she hid for you and
which I refused to believe
until the rain did fall into
a million little pieces around us.