My great grandmother gardened
her suburban yard: unlawned it,
planted it thick with beans, tomatoes,
peach trees-- an unruly, fruitful sprawl.
Indoors, she coddled shoots and starts
in yogurt pots.
I remember how she filled all her windowsills
with aloes and with wandering Jew.
She lived alone, green framed,
I remember how the quiet filled my ears.
She served me tomatoes, ripe and sliced
thick, dripping summer--she poured me
sweet tea, thick with honey, fruit, and mint.
I watched my manners. I asked
the names of plants. I did not know, then,
how hard she was to love,
that woman who made her own way,
who divorced when women didn't,
who cherished no one.
When I was grown, I heard
her children, dutiful, call her Mother
with no tenderness.
I remembered
she could coax new roots from a dry twig.
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