Loving Plants

The beauty of plants is not in question—
how they freshen a landscape with color,
permeating the air with their perfume.
I have planted many myself, choosing
this shape, that potential, the legacy
of ancestors that elevated gardens.

But in daily strolls with my indoor cat
around the perimeter of our yard
it’s a different matter all together.
Lovely for him, of course, to be outside
for a while, to smell the roses, as we say.
He stops at every one, as if to hear

confessions (are plants sad? have they secrets?),
prodding them out with his nose and his face:
a pastor with his penitents. And there’s one—
I won’t tell you which—where he always stops,
deeply smells, thrusting his head in its leaves,
closing his eyes. Where he finds his heaven.