Motus Plantis

by Moray McGowan

Indignant pines stare down the woodsman 
Shame him, till he hangs his yellow helmet on a branch 
And shuffles back to camp 
 
Wheat stalks cup their ears 
For the harvester’s throb 
Then blind the driver with a storm of phosphate dust 
 
Furtive carrots couple in the soil 
Their blissful misshapen children 
Send packaging robots into tantrums of despair 
 
Roses mourning their beheaded offspring 
Put away their pretty pastels for the nonce 
Their next dull blooms, unplucked, set seed 
 
Poodle-clipped privet grows steely stems 
Bouncing the shears back on their own cable 
Banish the bandaged gardener to a bench. 
 
Potatoes shrug off their mounded earth 
Greened, inedible, 
Sun-worshipping sprawlers on the soil 
 
Lettuces, though, throw themselves flat  
Overacting in their green doublets 
They let the slugs raze every last leaf 
 
Celery and rhubarb 
Sick, to their pale cores, of the blanching pot 
Up sticks in the early hours and hammer on the bedroom window  
 
And the lawn, the lawn! Aching for buttercups, 
Aching for clover, daisies, dandelions, 
It sends the mower slithering into the pond 
 
One night the pond too eats its own underseal 
Lily roots follow the seeping water 
Long-lost lovers reaching with blind fingertips for the earth