The Death of Plantmania

I saw it coming like the 6 a.m. from Halifax across the flat plains of
Southern New Brunswick, steam and the steady rumble filling the bay.
Lying in my bed, under three blankets, and hood pulled up,
pillows around me, dog at my feet, books crashing down on either
side and pens and paper.
I didn't know what time it would arrive.
And I was too happy to care, even though
I was a destination station.
It crashed through the wall, and squealed to a stop,
Inches from me, and I was pinned in place, lights in my eyes,
As the facts were laid out.
The facts.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Tell me again, I said, because I was too stunned to hear them once.
Wasn't the train I expected.
This one was driven by a ghost,
and I can't fight the supernatural.
I am flesh and blood, my feet touch the ground,
and stars leak out of my spine when I walk.
My angel wings only come out on special occasions,
but I am always capable of extraordinary grace.
My love was onboard, demonically changed,
a ghost himself.
I tried to remember him as he was before,
Was he always just a shell with no shadow?
No, no, in my memory, he was a cryogenically
frozen plant that stopped growing,
when it was put into the vault.
For the time he was in my care, I warmed him in
my two hands and tried to thaw years of ice,
never took a pick in hand,
but drew on the heat of my heart,
the faith I had in my ability to bring the dead back
with patience, with love, with the ever renewing source
that is my essential self, that is all our essential selves,
if one can tap into it.
I am a gardener, after all, and bring plants back every spring
from their winter deaths
with deft gentle fingers and an alchemists' knowledge.
WIth time, I would have succeeded and he would blossom
flowers he never knew were there,
perhaps by late summer, or next year.
I would wait, holding him in my two good hands,
caressing every leaf to unfurl, drawing water up through
the roots until the branches were stronger and taller than my touch,
and his leaves and tendrils would fill the house through the
chimney and grow out across the bay,
bigger and more beautiful,
than any plant ever known before.
We create the future, just by imagining it.
So I imagined for him a best life in which he could
be anything he wanted.
No, I imagined a life in which he was better than he dared dream,
cosmic dreams that could ride the ripples of galaxies.
I just had to break this thaw, coax the life back in,
and I heard his first grasping breaths, shallow but unmistakable.
I could imagine him alive again, good bones,
strong heart, free to stay, free to go.
One more wheeze, and then he was silent,
a motionless corpse again.
Healing takes many suns, many moons, many tides.
I took it slower. I had gone too quickly, tried too hard.
I started again more softly.
The train got him first, called him with a piper's song,
and he danced a Bacchic reel,
infused with its supernatural energy,
transformed before my eyes.
He rode atop the car with his legs on either side.
He smiled at me, a bloody, toothless mouth,
fingers thin to the bones, leper's flesh
green and red and stinking, his organs in
canopic jars beside him.
He laughed in riotous madness, hypnotic and haunted.
I waved at my work's failure, smiled warmly,
wished him safe travels, and a happy life,
wished him the fulfillment of his desires,
and sent him the love of my heart.
But even I knew where that train
was headed. He would be killed again.
Ghostly skin on a mortal man does not grant him undying.
All bread eating men ultimately descend to Hades.
Even Zeus was powerless
to the Fates' decree for his son Sarpedon.
As the train pulled away,
only then did the tears come.
I cried for my lost efforts, cried for him, cried for me,
oh how I cried for me and cry still now.
I cried enough tears that to turn his ashes to mud,
and even when he dies,
my tears will water the earth so he will be reborn as
something else.
In his new life will he remember?
I took good care of you, baby. I took the best care.