Some times
in the blistering afternoons of summer
or the frost of winter nights
I consider the roads not taken,
my lives not lived
the dances I never learned
the plants I didn’t buy.

I just passed a rhododendron
by a nursery
last week
– or so I suspect.
What do I know of flora?
Maybe it was a ficus.
This thing whatever its phylum
could have livened my room
and perhaps my life.
I let it be.
I left it alone.

There was a lovely fern cutting
I was offered last year.
It was free.
I merely had to accept it
and love it
to have some green in my life
but I forsook that chance
as well.

I could have had a cactus.
A cactus.
It takes no care.
I could have left it to its own devices
in my home
and then I would have become closer
to the ecosystem.
I could have lived a more natural life
with a cactus of my own
but I have no cactus.
I have no plants
at all.

Sometimes, the elephants cross no mountains
no canal gets built
and the plant remains unpurchased
so I am left to live alone
which surely
has made some sort of a difference.