(for my mother)

Not that you were a gardener.
You couldn’t keep half the plants
in the pots on your patio alive,
forgetting to water them as you did.

As a kid, I remember African violets
boldly purple in small planters on
the windowsill over the sink, which you
set there so you’d remember to fill
the small shrimp cocktail jar
you kept nearby for the flowers.

But somewhere along the line,
that stopped, as did so many things,
decade by decade, and Donna and I
took to tending and trimming the plants
when we’d come by, adding new,
replacing the dead every Mother’s Day.

Still, you liked growing things, and
if you’d’ve been here, I’d’ve sent you
this photo of a woman’s hands with
her garden’s final offerings in late
October, arranged top to bottom
in perfect chakra order—

you who loved the rainbow of
energy centers in the body—

a small aubergine as they say
in the UK, a little ball of eggplant
crowning at the top, down to
the sly smile of a red pepper
representing the root. And
in between a periwinkle,
a frilly yellow zinnia and
a beaming orange marigold.

You might have focused on
the gardener’s dirty hands or
the green tattoo on her wrist,
but Ma, the point is to admire
what emerged from a garden
at the end of its season—

all that color arranged on the palm
of the person who watched those
exquisite bits of life grow,
now plucked and dying,
but still so vibrant,

likely unaware of their approaching end,
held by the one who loves them,
who wanted to show them to strangers
so that we, too, might appreciate
their fleeting, earthy beauty.