Poem of the Day: Ryan's A Certain Kind of Eden

A Certain Kind of Eden

It seems like you could, but
you can’t go back and pull
the roots and runners and replant.
It’s all too deep for that.
You’ve overprized intention,
have mistaken any bent you’re given
for control. You thought you chose
the bean and chose the soil.
You even thought you abandoned
one or two gardens. But those things
keep growing where we put them—
if we put them at all.
A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.

-- Kay Ryan

I went on a binge of posting Kay Ryan poems a bit over a year ago; you can read them all here if you'd like to read more of this fabulous poet. And, although it's not accurate -- the week being long over -- I've tagged this post too with the Kay Ryan Week tag, to group it with the others.