Now We Will Speak in Flowers
by Micki Blenkush
I.
As a child I let the train of my own focus
roar across the tracks of my mother’s words
when she returned from the garden
elbow deep in dirt sprouting:
clematis
four o clocks
hosta.
Squirrels digging tulips, dogs trampling
marigolds, even her confession
to pulling daisies like common weeds
a mumbled blur. Not until the day she showed me
bright candy flowers I could cut into my own bouquet
did I accept one name. Zinnia, my mind whispered
as I bent low snipping off extra leaves, stroking
the layered petals like feathers down
a pigeon’s breast.
II.
Following her stroke, we brought flowers
to my mother’s room. Sweeping gestures
said all her smiling mouth could not. The first texts
she ever sent to me come from the hospital.
Simple love you’s floating back and forth
across January nights. Soon she texted flowers
across the distance. Gerber daisies
in a pixilated square.
Hopeful talk of morning glories germinated
as her speech gradually returned.
I walked the floor of my own house,
gripping the phone, straining to understand.
When I asked how deeply to plant
the four o’ clock seeds she gave me last fall,
their name sprang like a reflex
from my mouth.
Gyroscope Review 25
!