I.
My father hated flowers.
Every spring, my mother begged for garden space
to plant a few simple pansies or petunias,
and although we had enough acreage for
forty tomato plants,
twenty-one hills of cucumbers,
two hundred onion sets,
and the patent absurdity of three zucchinis,
he always said gruffly, “No room.”
Sometimes for utility’s sake he would allow her
a prim double row of marigolds to keep the bugs away,
but this was the exception that proved the rule.
II.
Early each spring, my father would summon us
to drive with him to the pasture,
and there he would urge us to marvel at
crocuses and buttercups and Indian paintbrushes.
Later in the summer, when he found a wild prairie rose,
he would cut off some blossoms
to display in the kitchen window above the sink.
Even if he discovered a particularly beautiful cactus,
he needed to make it his,
digging it up, wrapping it in wet rags,
and leaving it casually on the pickup seat
until he remembered to plant it one day.
My father loved flowers,
but only the ones that came to him freely.
–
Marne Wilson is a former academic librarian who lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Her poems have appeared in such places as Poetry East, Atlanta Review, and Hobart and are forthcoming in Emrys Journal and Gargoyle. She is the author of a chapbook, The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line, 2015).