No One Came

Holly Coddington

The plant in the room is bothering me.
The plant in the room is sharing my air.
The air in the room is syphoned through the plant.
That bothers me. I try to ignore the plant
because the plant in the room is affecting me.
I have entered the plant’s area of influence.
I am vulnerable. This is the power of the plant.
When I am close to the plant it is not my space.
The space belongs to the plant. The plant is hanging
in my window like an execution. I have executed
the removal of the plant but the plant remains unaltered.
The plant is a collection of Post-it tabs, an impeccable
farewell to government. Thomas Wyatt was brought a plant
in a tower. Imagine how that was for him, a poet
in a stone room with blood and leaves on his shirt.
Either all or no angels arrive in the mind where the plant is.
A motion of imagination next to no motion. The present
moment. A boat with a hole. The plant sits back.
A wheel makes one revolution in fifteen years. How long did
Thomas stay? The plant drilled the militia into the hearts of butterflies.
Twice I dreamed I was a woman in the Salem witch trials.
The plant knows my life, early and late. The shed. Behind it.
Maybe an iron rooster on a roof. The plant wants coal and alabaster.
The plant bores through me like a fist through a wall.