To keep her plants alive when she is gone
when someone else sees what she’s done
and wants to turn her lifework under,
take out the native ferns and honeysuckle,
the thick-trunked rhododendrons that she’s fed
and winter-covered for so long they pay in blooms
big as softballs pink and red, and beds of daffodils
that fill her dreams with more than yellow
trumpeting the light of spring and lilies
blooming one a day from stems that bloom
till fall, Friend,
spread her ashes by the spoonful
under everything she ever planted
on this steep and acid oak and hemlock hillside

And let them sweeten what they feed
and root as one in long and silent sentience
until their lives subside together
transformed
into the ground.