I pull out bonafide cataloged databased weeds that surround the fragile astilbe like handmaidens strongwilled and solid,

yet smother their Lady, threaten her breath with their skirts

Lady Astilbe, feathered nobility, direct descendent of fifty years rooted in a land fifty less or more leagues away

in my grandmother's garden, at the edge of the lawns between clippered green boundaries

where the sour cherry stood wanting for climbing by children who swarmed the branches and spit out the pits

and peach trees that lay low their jewels for the reaching in a land very nearby