Dear Lord, I have sinned against thee.
For I do not love all flowers equally.
For daffodils have come up in my yard
instead of tulips.
For I hate their stupid yellow faces.
And say they are no better than weeds.
For I have turned spiteful,
And admire the cats who do bite
through their necks.
For I finger my calluses from the planting,
And resent them still further.
For I blame them for their nature.
Yet once planted, they could but be
what they are.
For I resent the earth that they eat in their growing.
For even the crow who devoured a
nestling before me
Is more approved in my sight.
For I will not accept them, and say,
"I cannot."
For if I had courage
I would root them up by their heads
And leave them as carcass.
For my anger is implacable against
them.
Yet they grow in clusters like families
And still are detestable.
For I say, "How could this happen?"
As if it counted to measure.
For I tell myself I loved the barrenness better.
For I act as if this were the last
year,
And encourage the winds against them
And hate the rains which suckle them
up.
For I walk neither to the right nor left.
But would trample upon them.
For in the morning I wish it were evening
So they would be gone from my sight.
For I cannot forgive.
For all day my face is pressed against
the glass
And my eye is evil.
For I eye my neighbor's hose and will
it to burst
And drown them entirely. For they seem so proud.
For they have spent the winter feeling
worms
At their white skins, and have not complained to the air.
They do not cry out, "We are
cold,"
Though the wind blows against rawly,
Or against heat when the sun bakes
down upon them.
For they are not really ugly.
For much can be said to assert them,
Yet they anger me beyond all sanity.
For I suspect their connivance against
my favorite tulips.
For their golds are gall to me.
For in truth, my will is not done.
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer,
The Bible of the Beasts of the Little Field