Plant-Life-Stories
1.
When I was a child my grandmother led
me by the hand to the garden. My hand curled
within hers she raised
our fist to the pumpkin creeper: Dripping gold,
cushioned on leafy earth and my disbelief. Love,
she proclaimed, one never feels the load
however huge it grows.
Love I thought I could support
and unfurled in pollen-light. But
it's this strange tenderness
I can't bear that floods
its nectar, that he won't touch
and so turns inward, creeper-like, swells
my breast, hardening
amber till no flesh is left.
He sees me, and turns
to other barren
ground, his step undimmed by malice
and the sun’s bright dance. But it's clear
he wants no load, his retreat sure
as I implode.
2.
He left me with a line that led
me by the hand past pain to release:
He’s never felt as rooted
as at this moment, with her, I washed
from his life like soil into rain. I tore
myself from him and myself from me
as if sap were leaving tree, leaving
my need from toenails to upraised arms,
retreating like a shadow from his love,
mine naked under stinging skies.
That was then. Now, brushing past,
he says his life is ordinary,
he sings no longer or rarely.
I feel a bramble, blazing
flowers and no leaf.
The thorn turns inwards: My insides
mauled by this poor victory weep
red petals. It’s not
for or her or myself I grieve,
but for this stranger who laughed
wild once in the dark forests of his life.
3.
But he will never know, this man,
who has stood by me, not forest-like through thick
and thin but in the in–betweens,
like a lonely tree on a bald hill
that provides shade to wanderers
to unpack their lunch and eat and sleep:
Sustenance on their journeys.
But he will never know, this man,
how he has tilled
the field of my longings,
scattering seeds that grow wild,
rich my secret valleys. But
will he ever see the warm harvest
of blessed years, of storm-blown
ripening grain and husk that fall
with ease, with gentleness
on barren hills from which a lone
tree grows again, tap root seeking
the stream underground, my life and his?
Earth on earth, my back a hill,
I open my arms to gather its spring
that is our love:
It leaps fresh and clear.
4.
The morning's sunlit chill
runs with long wind and leaf shadows
through the house. We sit
together eating
the pomegranates of Demeter's cursed
season. We expect no miracles except
this scarlet grain, each as plump
as a memory. He says: There's no anger
between us. We are both surprised. Mouth red
and dripping I look outside:
Spring clusters
on the old mango tree.