April is National Poetry Month!

For the third year, I am participating in NaPoWriMo at Poets.org. The goal is to write a poem a day for thirty days.  I've posted three poems, so I'm on target.  Here's the poem I posted today:

My Mother’s Garden [Joan]

April 3, 2011

My sisters and I spent

last summer digging up her irises

because, she said,

she had to start the chemo, and

she wouldn’t feel like dealing with them.

Once the beds were clear,

and after her first treatment

with the saving poison, she expressed

a desire for a few flowers,

just a few.  The few flowers grew

into mulched beds and

rock borders on both sides of the porch,

Kockout roses, clematis, chrysanthemums,

a trimmed hydrangea and a pink

rose bush pruned to a topiary.

To this, we added, as the chemo

went on—monthly sessions

that left her gray and crabby—

a statue of St. Francis (solar), a toad

house (solar), and a duck rain gauge (solar).

When Christmas came, the doctors

returned her body to her,

and we bought Johnny Jump-ups;

last week, she asked for some of my

Asiatic lily bulbs—purple and white--

but declined the calla lily bulbs, saying

that, since she had given hers away,

she shouldn’t take them.  She asked for Sweet

Peas, reminding my older sister and me

that she grew those when we lived on Laurel Street.

Lately, I notice, when she’s not talking flowers

or what I should and should not eat,

she’s saying, “I remember…,” as though

she’s trying to plant those memories in me

the way I plant her flowers when she asks.

Copyright 20011