Geiger-counter heart

Waiting on exponential decay

Gardens don’t grow in Fukushima prefecture.
They wait.

For the right conditions. 
For non-acidic rain.
For uranium half-lives,
and exponential decay rates
 
All the while vying for light, 
fighting and tangling, 
uprooting, and mangling, 
ensconcing those below 
in shadow.

Sometimes gardens are violent like that, 
viral. But vital.

Gardens grow into balance, 
fine-tuned to the mitochondrial,
into a tentative peace, though—tenuous,
tension held coiled in roots. 

Our own Fukushimas, and Chernobyls, 
and Three-Mile Islands.
And these places wait, gestating patiently
for uranium glows to fade.

And until such a time,
gardens grow still—beautiful,

though hard to bear where
Geiger counters click like clockwork. 
Minute hands for skittish foxes 
and documentary film crews

and weeds that grow where gardens don’t,
and slowly turn the soil.