97poems/bouganvillea

The bouganvillea is filling in
I say to myself,
looking out the window
over my desk.

I think of the woman
who used to live here,
as I sometimes domin the garden,
and wonder what she did in this room.

It seems there should have been
a dining table where my desk now sits,
the long window cranked
all the way open in summer.

I assumed at first that her kids
slept in this room without a door.
But the neighbors said the whole
family slept in one room.
They were not Americans.

I often think of her when I move the plants
I believe she set out just before she left,
unable to take them in the moving truck
is the story I tell myself.

I dig them up for a shadier spot
or a sunnier one,
or because I’ve changed
her mind or my own.

I have attributed to her
the plots laid out in stones
grateful for the labor it took,
the healthy young back,
as much as the beauty
they bring to the yard,
something I would not have
been up to.
But I may be hasty in that assumption
as well, the stones long settled
seem as old as the house.

The garden and potting shed drew me here,
somehow timeless,
though not quite a grandmother’s garden
or I would have been surprised with
daffodils and irises the second year,
but its spirit is unfashionably real
and plain.
It was not until the third season
that I made peace with it,
letting go of the vision
I had of paths and herbs.
Making adjustmnets to its
native truth and my own.

This year at last some things
are beginning to bloom,
the lavendar, now in its third home,
the pink geranium in the box,
our wedding rose against the shed,
the yellow succulent
the woman down the road
yanked up to give me
when I asked her what it was.
“Wild onion I call it,” she said
shaking dirt from the roots.

That is how this garden has come to be,
geranium snips I bring home from walks,
violets from my neighbor’s yard,
all of it a hedge against the ever present
threat of glamour, it keeps my world
a simple and frugal place.

4/16/97