Poetry by Jackie McClure
There are green things
we’ve planted here.
There are things that grew
which we never planted.
Had I weeded more
while my mother was dying
I would have never
discovered the poppies,
dormant in their seed-encased husks,
under the matting of grass,
masking an old garden spot.
So you see,
we did some good here:
ripping up squares
of thickly rooted sod
to unwittingly scatter
millions of seeds,
and, unknowingly,
we fed them.
When first they rose
above the weeds
in the new-broken soil
I was spending daylight
hours by my mother’s side,
urging her to eat,
helping her to move.
When I noticed they
were to be flowers,
she had gone home,
lonely, broken, and frightened.
It took longer to reach her.
When they burst
into scarlet bloom,
dwarfing the hearty weeds
I knew they were for her:
tall, lipstick-red poppies
garish, erect, unexpected,
floating
on the thin stems
upon which everything rests.
Jackie McClure writes poetry and fiction aiming to illuminate commonplace segments of our shared landscapes. She has an MFA from Goddard College and has published most recently in Humana Obscura and Hellbender. She lives near the Salish Sea in Northwest Washington State. Her preferred state of being is swimming.
