Playing Solitaire

It's like tending a garden
and watching the stems
rise tall and shrink small,
blacks juxtaposing reds
– an interracial affair –
then dissipating into four piles
at the top of the garden,
then picked up,
ripped, stripped,
strewn, mixed,
fixed anew into brand new ranks
piling higher and higher to the right.

And a new garden starts to grow
with proper flips and flops,
slips and slops,
grunts and groans,
with kings and queens and jacks
and numbers all in a row,
carefully integrated,
on my kitchen table.