The sun’s eye closes behind mountains, but
you lose sleep tonight, uncertain if the garden
is meant to inevitably survive or die, or if
it matters—one way or the other—with or
without you. Maybe it’s not just the garden
you worry about, but something we call hope
pitted against despair, something we can only
speak of by speaking to ourselves about flowers,
weeds, and hummingbirds; spiders, vines, and
a garden tended under a constitution of stars
we must believe in, splayed across our sky.


Richard Blanco
from Election Year