Mums from your Garden

Andrew Calis

I.          When It Is Hard to Speak of Love
You’ve seen them live when every other thing
has rusted to the stem. What keeps their soft
sunbursting petals alive?
                                         Only love.
You will not say this, though.  

II.        After Failing to Take Her Life, Your Mother Walks in Our Garden
What breathes sunlight into veins? What unfurls
the leaves in green and keeps them green in this
undying sun when rain is a ghost to the ground?  

It is more than love; it mixes — water, blood —
with death: the midday sun, the unsponged neck turns red
and sweat, before it cools, is gone. She thinks, 

salt flaking her face: the gardener gives up
everything
                  but hope. 

III.       Photosynthesis/Transubstantiation
When you cut them for vases, when
fireworks of petal-color come inside
like guests to the table in the dining room,
you will not hear your aching knees.
You will forget the waiting-months, cold winter
and the buds that did not bloom.

                                                    You will hear
your mother’s gasp, amazed at so much life
in one bright place. She’ll stare at them, unspeaking.
She’ll breathe them in — breathe their radiating joy,
petal after petal after petal. They will land
like color on her eyes, in her blood,
pulling from it molecules of love. 

And then you will know it is finally over —
that this hard summer, the hardest summer
of your life, has finally come to an end.

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Andrew Calis
Andrew Calis is a Palestinian-American poet and essayist. He has published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, America, Dappled Things, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for and won various awards, including the Zócalo poetry prize and the poets.org Treehouse Climate Action prize. He lives with his family near Baltimore.