I like our old and wild lilacs. No one has hummingly tended
them, no gloved gardener in pleated work shorts has cinched her wide-brimmed
hat and knelt or stretched for the dead brown sprays. They are ropey old
broads, a collective of them. They’ve dispensed with show and gone for height.
They are too wicked and busy to clear the unproductive suckers. Perhaps that’s
where they hang their potions.
It’s the old turn-about. At first the scraggy shrubs sat on
my chest like another chore, a should just about last in line behind getting
the garden in and weeding the blueberries. I interpreted it according to me. My
lilacs, my house, my judgment. What might people think of us,
new-neighbors-with-their-abandoned-lilacs?
Now I couldn’t care less. I freaking love those goddamn
winners. If I stop thinking about myself for one hot second they explode in
wild, exquisite singularity. I don’t think anyone planted them – or someone
planted one a good long time ago and
they’ve spread by suckers ever since. No one can really see them, anyway. They
have their own agenda. They are twisted with ragged bark, like old grape or
laurel. They reach away from the shade of the oak, into my shaggy lawn.
Neighboring alpacas nibble their backsides.
I suppose they are cultivars, and as such might be happy
with some attention and care and coaxing. But I’m not eating them any time soon
– I’ll diligently prune the apples and raspberries. I don’t even care if they
stop flowering. I want to see what those gnarly old birds can do.
