For all of my long time followers, you know that when I left dA for a year or so, I took down my gallery. This means that some things you liked went away. When I came back, I didn't see the need to clutter up the submissions with lots of old work, much of it bad. However if there's something of mine that you'd like to see up, note me or leave a comment and I will. No matter what it is. If you can remember my worst work and want to embarrass me, request it; I'll put it back.

This is not limited to one category. It could have been anything: a bit of writing, a photograph, a manipulation, an experiment, anything. However you are limited to one piece of work. So think on it.

As I expect no one to comment, I'll impose a deadline. The new year, say. Plenty of time to be discouraged and forget all about it.

The aphids, overwintering, arrive
With the first crocuses as they purple
This new earth – limp and melting. Teeming
Throughout so many sturdy, branching pathways
Into paradise, these immigrants
Suited in bright green
Trail behind them a curling brown death. A season
All their own: a thriving plague of color
Blooms briefly before succumbing
To mottled cancerous yellows – liver-spotted
Trembling hands; the fresh, wet puckered
Peony lips wither, fading into past snows.

The azalea cannot withstand the onslaught,
Its leaves picked bare
In an attempt to stem the blight, its petals
Transform as this quiet suffocation
Takes root: too fragile, littering the ground
Like last white breaths. Bitter summer damasks
Spread, overtaking this brief respite
As brambles; thorns; these tangles of vile bodies:
A noxious growth, bearing only a sickly perfume.

You, my garden, are dying.