Greenhouse Blues

It’s not enough to talk to plants
you also have to listen. And day after day
it’s the same petty complaints and trivial gossip:
the sun too bright or too dim,
the soil too wet or too dry.
The fern protests that the spider plants
are stealing all the light, and the begonia
that the Wandering jew has sipped from her pot.
The palms reminisce of their years in grand hotels,
and the African violets plan their return to the jungle.
Some days I have it up to here, and like the priest
or the judge or the psychoanalyst, I begin
to appreciate automatons and computers; rejoice, in fact,
over the quiet self-complacence of the toaster.