Every morning, I noticed her through the school bus window
bent over plants in her garden, wearing slippers, robe,
and night cap, as if the first thing she did upon waking
was walk out her door to smell her roses and check
to see if the hollyhocks had opened new orbs, as if
the plants were her family and she had to greet them
and all the other vegetal wonders that filled her
generous yard before the day’s chores began.
Sunny days or cloudy with fog, I saw her there,
fingering the leaves of this tree or that flower
as though in conversation. I didn’t understand
what could make a person so willing to go
outside in early mornings to dig in the dirt
as if it weren’t a chore like those my mom
gave me of covering an entire hundred-yard
bank with plants in summer’s heavy heat.
How Mrs. McCready kept up with weeding
and watering her half acre in advanced age
I don’t know, but I think of her now as I step
on to my deck and greet the garden’s green
fluorescence in a world where armies bomb
what took centuries to build and ignorance cuts
through forests, turns grasslands into deserts.
How I’ll manage my garden’s enthusiasm
for growth when I turn ancient, I don’t know,
but maybe some of the children who walk by
my house on their way to school will notice
the garden’s sage, calendula, roses, and poppies,
and grow curious about how they, too,
might nurture beauty in this world.
—
Anna Citrino poems have been published in Bellowing Ark, Canary, Juniper, Main Street Rag, the Paterson Literary Review, Waterwheel Review, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice among other journals and anthologies. The author of two chapbooks, Saudade, and To Find a River, and two books, A Space Between, and Buoyant, Anna is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Sonoma County, California where she’s learning to draw. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com
