Construction Materials for a Poem about Dahlias

English ivy curtains the windows

Shredded siding, peeling paint

Crippled gutters, listing chimney

Blackberries swallowing the tool shed

Carport collapsing, slick shingles

Condemned birdhouses

Fresh firewood dumped in waist-high grass

Rusted mail box survives at 45 degrees

Bags of cat food stacked on the crumbling front porch

Skinny cats snoozing on jambs

Decoupled power line

No vehicle

Wild wisteria

Shattered coffee cups everywhere

Shrubbery sweeps the roof line

Sterile cherry tree

Dead freezer

Squad of dead barbecues

Canned ham trailer sliced in half

Newspaper box from the weekly that folded in the Carter Administration

Punctured greenhouse streaked with mold

One day something new:

A patch of dirt speared with wooden stakes flying orange ribbons

A hose to a sprinkler,

black writing on the stakes

A day later: gray woman wearing a floral robe

and fluffy slippers spades the soil

and tells me she’s planting dahlias,

one named Dakota Renegade,

where dahlias can’t possibly grow