Ordinary Miracles
Queen Anne’s Lace, for instance.
Fields and roadsides snowy
with her multi-floret blooms,
flat topped, supported
by green ribs
like an up-ended umbrella.
The hollow of the bloom
before it opens.
The way lacey spaces
fill up between segments
as the flower unfolds,
velvety purple cross
at the center.
Jewelweed.
Tender green leaves
turn silver underwater,
orange blooms delicate
as orchids. In autumn,
seed pods explode
when touched.
Chicory. Blue mandalas
at the edge of the asphalt,
nod in the breeze,
bloom into October.
Hidden in plain sight
along the roadside.
Ordinary miracles.
My Mother as the Farm in Delaware
My mother merges with rich earth
where she coaxed tomato seedlings,
sprouted in the dining room window
into a dense garden-forest
bursting with Big Boys and Yellow Pears
Roots grow from her feet
tether her to the persimmon grove
where she harvested fruit
made sweet, softened
by first frost.
Her hands become
the long-handled steel spoon
stirring pots of tomatoes,
grapes for juice and jelly,
apple sauce, vegetable soup.
Creek water and berry juice
run in her veins, her voice
fuses with wood thrush and spring peeper.
She grows wings, bursts
into spiral flight with the woodcock.
The land sits fallow now, a tangle
of honeysuckle, kudzu and multiflora rose.
My mother blooms in the daffodils
that open in March, with no one
this side of the veil to see them.
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