they ate my asters

I planted 50 bulbs but I dug
too shallowly and now
small divots across the yard testify
to my incompetence
at gardening and my fierce
generosity to squirrels or at least
this one gray squirrel who frequents
my porch just outside the kitchen
window through which I stare
before the coffee kicks in and who
only startles if I knock but never
when I move behind the glass
like some specimen he keeps in this
large cage and who in an odd reversal
feeds him fibrous fetal flowers
while he titters on about
behaviors of mine, poems, he may
never be able to adequately
explain though we seem to have
an understanding or at the very
least an arrangement (let’s
call it a bouquet) of sorts even as
our April lawn lies pocked and bare