Bud Blessing
Four days before Dying Day,
my mother’s windowsill orchid glows
like a Sabbath morning sun.
I trudge toward the bud-blessing
that my pastor-cousin delivered
after I left Momma last night.
Cracking open the window,
I offer a prayer
while my mother huddles
under her forest-green-coverlet.
Temperamental florets,
orchids wilt and shrivel
if not cherished and respected.
Some succumb slowly,
getting browner each day.
Others, like my mother,
end up a stripped stalk
within two months.
Dormant orchids can look lifeless
but replenish during napping-periods.
Maybe if I planted a garden-stake
behind Momma’s hospital bed,
she’d grow stronger or straighter.
Might she recover
if I switched her location?
Self-appointed architect
of this shrinking, gray room,
I hear the killy-killy-killy cry
from a kestrel outside--
Bird, flower, daughter and mother,
all four of us wishing to survive.
Nocturne
After Reading Mary Oliver’s When I am Among the Trees
Dancing among blossoms,
she knew what she was--
Especially when shimmying
with daffodils and lavender.
But now, at age fifty-eight,
she tiptoes away from star jasmine,
choosing to dote on black shadows
and death-white-moonflowers.
At 2 a.m. she feels the heft
of whispering-floral-breaths,
so she makes a single birthday-wish:
Greet each night
like an angel’s trumpet.
But would she bloom
if she too heralded darkness?
Pacing bamboo floors,
she counts the muted clicks
of her life pendulum.
Then her heart petals clack shut,
along with early sprays of sunlight.
This first birthday morning
spent without her mother,
that evening primrose
who nurtured her and gifted her life.
Jennifer Grant is not any type of flower, though she likes to periodically pretend she’s as stoic as a southern magnolia or as rare as a ghost orchid. Her second collection of poetry, Dangerous Women, won the 2021 Blue Light Press Book Award and her first collection of poetry, Good Form, was published by Negative Capability Press in 2017. She lives near The Swamp in Newberry, Florida, where she considers wrestling gators as well as words.
Four days before Dying Day,
my mother’s windowsill orchid glows
like a Sabbath morning sun.
I trudge toward the bud-blessing
that my pastor-cousin delivered
after I left Momma last night.
Cracking open the window,
I offer a prayer
while my mother huddles
under her forest-green-coverlet.
Temperamental florets,
orchids wilt and shrivel
if not cherished and respected.
Some succumb slowly,
getting browner each day.
Others, like my mother,
end up a stripped stalk
within two months.
Dormant orchids can look lifeless
but replenish during napping-periods.
Maybe if I planted a garden-stake
behind Momma’s hospital bed,
she’d grow stronger or straighter.
Might she recover
if I switched her location?
Self-appointed architect
of this shrinking, gray room,
I hear the killy-killy-killy cry
from a kestrel outside--
Bird, flower, daughter and mother,
all four of us wishing to survive.
Nocturne
After Reading Mary Oliver’s When I am Among the Trees
Dancing among blossoms,
she knew what she was--
Especially when shimmying
with daffodils and lavender.
But now, at age fifty-eight,
she tiptoes away from star jasmine,
choosing to dote on black shadows
and death-white-moonflowers.
At 2 a.m. she feels the heft
of whispering-floral-breaths,
so she makes a single birthday-wish:
Greet each night
like an angel’s trumpet.
But would she bloom
if she too heralded darkness?
Pacing bamboo floors,
she counts the muted clicks
of her life pendulum.
Then her heart petals clack shut,
along with early sprays of sunlight.
This first birthday morning
spent without her mother,
that evening primrose
who nurtured her and gifted her life.
Jennifer Grant is not any type of flower, though she likes to periodically pretend she’s as stoic as a southern magnolia or as rare as a ghost orchid. Her second collection of poetry, Dangerous Women, won the 2021 Blue Light Press Book Award and her first collection of poetry, Good Form, was published by Negative Capability Press in 2017. She lives near The Swamp in Newberry, Florida, where she considers wrestling gators as well as words.
