Last spring we planted
a rainbow of coleus
in blue ceramic pots
across our front porch.
The runt of the seedlings,
we buried haphazardly
in a small-plastic-faux-clay-planter.

It is early Autumn now
and runt has grown
enormuser than all the others,
like a “feed-me-Seymour-venus-people-eater”
in some little flower shop
around the corner.

And the winds have picked-up
down here in SE-NC
with a damn slew-stew of hurricanes
turmoiling the sea
from the Sahara to Southport.

So, of course, the giant coleus
is forever blowing over
and I go out on the porch
to set it right,
so another gust comes up,
and over it goes
and I
and it
and I
and over it goes
and so on and on and on…

Until,
finally,
I recall a definition of insanity
I learned in puberty
and I lecture myself, pedantically, saying,

“Ole Son, why are you
repeating and repeating and repeating yourself
again and again and again
while hoping for a different outcome?
If that coleus desires
to grow vertically from horizontally
instead of perpendicularly from the floor,
who are you to stop it?

Maybe it’s doing just what it wants to!”

You know?
It’s wonderful to see
how happy coleus can be
growing exactly how it wants,
becoming what it is destined to become,
without the unsolicited interference
of some interloper who,
it seems,
has not discovered what
“mind your own damn business”
really means.