The Gardener's Only Child (Poetry)

Knee-high, she watched
the digging, the raking-over
the breaking-down of soil
to a fineness where the shallow trenches ran
ruler-straight and the green twine strung
taut between two sticks marked where
the carrots’ double row
would show their feather tips.

She grew an inch or two —
helped plant out runner beans — their shoots
grown lanky in black paper pots —
her hands in soil for work not play
her father supervising how
she pressed and firmed albino roots
forever at his elbow, eager, keen
to weed and water, prune or hoe

she spent her childhood learning quick
to tease the aphids with a brush
from show exhibits — dahlias
and mophead Japanese chrysants
anxious, seeking his brief nod
she styled each shaggy head and smoothed
rogue petals to obey the reflex curl.

‘Amethyst’ their listed name —
true floral giants with thumb-thick stems
slashed brutally — the phloem’s heart exposed
to take in water — keep the lovely dead alive.
Their perfect trio won the class —
too modestly he rose to claim the prize
half by rights was hers for effort and the love
put in — to prove herself to him.

His praise was a thin rain —
a half-hearted patter said for show
it had little impact on the drought
so any greenness in her withered —
the small words all dried out.
That garden’s gone to ruin since
he’s old — too old to understand
how her poems seed like wild flowers
from a lost and stubborn plant.