Hitting for the cycle

Hitting for the cycle
"It is designed to break your heart."--A. Bartlett Giamatti

That makes it easier to shrug, to close the book
on some tragic character falling ill, so irrevocably ill
while the leaves dance down in their long bright autumn.
It's meant that way. It's meant to be. Six months
and you're out. Sixty years and you're out. A quick
signing of a sixty day lease and then, by god, you're out
with a Costco bag clutched sweaty and all of your regrets
poking out the sides.

This is how we shove new petunias into the ground,
deadhead with a flick, tearing petals with their old meat
smell thick on your fingernails, and purple. Nurse them
along, but as callous as an orderly with the demented,
oh they were better dead. It is designed, these gardens
blooming brief and hot, every year, every page turned
and something somewhere ends.