don't tell me it isn't happening

NEW

The long path sap sludges up
through an iris, is it new

each spring? And what would
an iris care for novelty?

Urgent in tatters, it wants
to wrest what routine it can

from the ceaseless shifts
of weather, from the scrounge

it feeds on to grow beautiful
and bigger: last week the space

about to be rumpled
by iris petals was only air

through which a rabbit leapt,
a volley of heartbeats hardly
contained by fur, and then the clay-
colored spaniel in pursuit

and the effortless air
rejoining itself whole.

William Matthews

these are the sixteen kinds of irises that grow in my garden.
the ones with their names attached DID NOT BLOOM this year.
profuse iris, with, at most, one bloom.

i called the local experts,
and they said that they're hearing this from a lot of people;
i said that in 20 years this has never happened,
and they said that they're hearing about things
that haven't happened in as long as 100 years.