Foxglove, Loosestrife, Lupines

When that I was exceptional
To myself, exceptionally young,
I composed unexceptional

Songs to be sung about flowers
Beside the New Jersey highways
And waysides in August,

Loving invasives as pretty
As loosestrife in crumbling,
Crowded Not-Quite Manhattan so

Much my brain obliterated,
Repeatedly, names of other flowers
Too adjacent. So many years,

So little learned, that I stumbled
Again and again over foxgloves
And lupines, forgetting

Their names, substituting
My first love, loosestrife, as a name
For everything vaguely reminding

Me of flowers in summer when
I was so unsure and unemployed
I was free in my irresponsibility,

Not happy, not contented, just
At loose ends. I would learn

To doubt the value of these simples,

Little things to human events,
Would learn to strain after great
Themes and the horrors of stories,

Those disgusting human inventions
Unlike any greedily innocent
Invasive botanizing that crept

Into the gardens of sniveling divinity
And tempted me, you, a few.
Anyone's worth contentment.