The Seed Leaf (Poem)

Once, a plant in my garden

Had your name on it.

An ordinary plant,

Philodendron or some such.

My children grew alongside

And tended it.

My first even learned its name,

Its real name,

Its Latin name.

 

It gradually was crowded out,

By roses with spike-thorns, and gingers,

By lilies, rain- and toad-,

By blue daze and euphorbia

And Peruvian daffodils.

And in my one-tongued garden,

I was happy.

 

The great oak planted

On my second girl’s birthday

Towers twenty feet above,

And shades out all,

Except the primordial fern.

But the purple passion flower,

Skittering with swallowtails and viceroys,

It climbs, until it reaches sun.

 

You never met the second boy,

My heart’s joy.  The first,

Its aches and sudden fears.

So many years have gone, I can’t

Remember in which house you slept,

Which dishes, you condemned for being soiled.

 

But how I blushed with shame

At the state of my house:

Not the German kind of clean.

And now!  What else could you say or do

But back away, in horror.

 

Your face looks different now,

Not round and kind,

But then, I have enough roundness

For the both of us.  And you proved

Your kindness by searching my name

And finding it, despite my

Paranoid precautions.

 

I preserved you in green,

In the leaves of a plant

In my garden.

But now you are real,

Cropping up on my feed,

With vigor and stubbornness:

Friendship.

 

Taking root in the soil,

In neglected shade,

I see a seed leaf rising.

 

 

 

Copyright 2017 Andrea W. LeDew