Feverfew

Ever hear the one about the writer who dismissed poems about "flowers and grandmothers"?

Yeah, me too.

Don't get me wrong. I love the work of this particular poet, who happens to be male. 

Is that last detail relevant? I don't know. Don't we all, at times, swallow ideas whole, without chewing, without tasting?

Still.

Here's an early piece about my flowers, my grandmother. She was a rock, a rockstar in my family's world. Someone who'd had a tough life, but made it look gracious and easy for over a century, a feat that required grit and—yes!—delicacy.

Feverfew

 

One day Gram brought over two plants for me,

and now they grow everywhere—

through the cracks in the sidewalk and the rock wall

and behind the garage and even in a ring

around the plum tree. Just this morning,

I took out the garbage and found one blooming,

as tall as my knees, at the side of the house.

 

Some of the neighbors call them “weeds,” and once

someone tried to tell me they were really chamomile,

but I know differently—

 

like miniature daisies, these small white flowers

with the dab of yellow and the wide, laughing leaves

are called feverfew, Chrysanthemum Parthenium,

or, more simply, “Gram flowers,”

and every time I see them she is with me—

her slender ankles and silver hair, her tablecloths

and place cards and sheer stockings:

 

Gram of the frozen cookies and the flutes of cranberry juice,

Gram of the rose bushes and the ripe tomatoes,

Gram of the BLT’s and the patio swing,

of timecards and two weeks' vacation and an onyx ring,

of lawn bowls, tea rooms, swimming pools and ‘How-do!’

Gram, ancestress of my skinny feet and private grumbling—

gone for a year and still around me,

growing, blooming, scenting the air I breathe—

the air you, too, are breathing.