Rain overflowing from the cup
I left outside. Honestly, it's the wrong year
to write a love poem. Though I walk
through the valley of semblance.
I am every figure in the deck. Magnolias
make me feel guilty. Half I go where
my mother sends me, half I deliver
unintended messages. Chimera
of passion flowers running into Lady Banks
barely keeping pace with the sampaguitas.
How Lady Banks is a placeholder name
for the unknown gardener who tended
this cultivar in China before 1807.
By placeholder, I mean erasure
but I would like to mean placeholder.
I would like—one day—
for the gardener to be revealed.