In a former garden I tended, I planted elecampane whose yellow blossoms bloomed over my head. The plant spread along the garden’s back edge, a natural fence between the bed where I planted greens and tomatoes and the field where I sowed potatoes. We had reclaimed that stretch of field from the forest, and the sparse soil was hungry for manure and the cover crops we rotated.

Now, in search of elecampane to transplant, I find this flower, the long ragged-edge leaves already fading from this year’s growth, the greenery not particularly lovely. I plant this strange flower before our house.

Flowers have the undeserved rap of girlyness, of flimsy decoration, of false medicine. Not so, not so.

how quiet
the light-blue morning glory —
such good manners

— Issa