There’s a specific yellow that belongs to things left to their own devices—
I’ve watched it spread across the leaves in slow, unstoppable slices
of evidence about the gap between my thinking and my following through,
the pot on the counter accumulating its quiet indictment of the you
who passes it daily with the glass in hand and the thought in the mind
and somehow arrives at the couch without having taken the time
to close the six feet between the faucet and the waiting soil—
it’s six feet. I have done nothing. The plant is spoil.
I meant to water the plant. I had the glass. I had the route mapped clean.
I had the water in my hand and the plant in the space between
the faucet and the couch—I walked from one to the other
without stopping in the middle, which is either the mother
of all metaphors or just the particular physics of a man
who loses the thread between the thought and the action plan.
It’s not indifference—I want to be accurate about that.
I think about the plant with specificity and fact.
I think this fully, I commit to the thought and hold it clear,
and then the thought completes and exits and the television’s here
and the moment of the watering has passed its window for the day—
the plant is yellowing in increments. I meant to water it. I say.
This is the fourth week and the leaves
have crossed the border into the particular that grieves
out loud from the counter—the specific lean of the thing, the brown
at the outermost edges spreading slowly toward the mantle.
I meant to water the plant. I mean it now, which is also
what I meant last week. The glass is right there. The plateau
between the wanting-to and the doing remains the terrain
I can’t seem to cover. I meant to water the plant. Again.