The old fence needs to come down,
which means this summer’s
over-the-top crop of morning glories,

literally spilling over the fence,
must meet an untimely death, which
kills a bit of something in me.

All day—not just in the morning—
light gleams down the throat
of each purple blossom,

generously sized and so happy
I cannot help but smile at them.
I have caused their early demise,

and I mourn them, wondering
how long it will take for them
to grow to such a mass that

they’ll overtake the new fence.
Years, I imagine, though if I long
for such purple majesty,

I need only to look across the yard
at the opposite fence where
the cousins of the departed

smother that surface, drip onto
the out-of-their-minds leggy ferns
that, with no help from me,

bend as gracefully as ballerinas
toward the grass. Their days
are numbered, too, of course,

as yours are, and mine, and those
of ones we don’t want to disappear.
But even in that trampled earth

where the new fence is rising,
glory lives and will make itself
known again. Just wait.