Without mercy
Sometime after storms flooded the night my silver pot on the deck, till now blooming pink and white, swims puddled, confused by the deluge. I open the screen and survey, barefoot, wet. Two bent blossoms peer back at me from rutted dirt, uncomfortably the focal point, whether shyness or survivor’s guilt, I couldn’t say. Together we view their sister petals now littering the lower walkway. Did your roots have such a tentative grip on the soil, I ask, then let go? Why so helpless, I say, so easily unmoored? Get a grip. Their stems reach outward in a tangled web, anxious, unable to feed, diminished in this disapproval of their sudden need while even the sun behind the clouds turns gray and cold.
–Jan H. Cooper
I have enjoyed writing again after years of focusing more on raising our four children while directing children’s ministries at church. Ironically, even though this poem is about gardening, my husband and I now live in a community without gardening options. -Jan
