Bonsai

Her blue eye's corner caught upon the leaves.

"Do you want it? Is it not beautiful?"

-Yes, as ripples born from stones not yet thrown.

For a tidy ten dollars, it was mine,

To sit in sun and be watered weekly.

Each morning's first ray brings fresh white flowers

Hidden in the green of its new branches.

It is called by some the Fukien Tea Tree,

Carmona retusa (lord of castles

Beaten back), and if care is not taken

It will burst its pot and grow great and tall,

But I prune away shoots that grow each day

(Butterfly shears ensuring that this soul

Shall never rise in awful heresy).

When she undertook to buy me a tree,

She did not know of Dante's suicides,

Nor that harpies have their fill from the twigs.