Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle,
cracked ice crunching in pails,
the night that numbs the leaf,
the duel of two nightingales,
the sweet pea that has run wild,
Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
~Boris Pasternak

Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats from “I stood tip-toe on a little hill”

What did thought do?
“Stuck a feather in the ground and thought
it would grow a hen”

Rod by rod we pegged the drill for sweetpea
with light brittle sticks,
twiggy and unlikely in fresh mould
and stalk by stalk we snipped
the coming blooms.

And when pain had haircracked her old vestal stare
I reached for straws and thought
seeing the sky through a mat of creepers,
like water in the webs of a green net,
opened a clearing where her heart sang
without caution or embarrassment, once or twice.
~Seamus Heaney “Sweet Pea” from Station Island

Sweet peas flowering next to orange pumpkins?

Usually separated by season,
one from late spring,
the other from mid-autumn,
they were never meant to meet.

Yet here are strange neighbors,
grown side by side in the same soil
through the same weeks,
their curling vines entwined.

Forgotten sweet pea seeds swelled and thrived,
dropped in the midst of summer weeds,
now rich pastel blooms gracing a harvest table
with spring-like perfume.

So I want to germinate where I happen to land,
even when ill-timed and out of place.
May I run wild while interwoven,
bound to those who look and act nothing like me.

Thus encouraged to climb high,
I blossom boldly
to help face down the fate
of a killing frost.