It must be home- and slowly grown,
allowed to long linger hearthside
alongside heart, blood, bone,
getting good and warm. Do not be
thrown by the erratic exotic
appearing full-flowered, fully blown,
and doing the trick as well, or better,
from a seed wild-sewn.
Extremes are far too easy—
be they benignant or malign.
The ideal’s a rogue affinity:
the invasive-but-contained one that,
though exiled from natal soil—its sole
known source, might just turn up
playing mouth organ for another
throat, breast, lung. Another voice.
