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For Your Birthday: Planting in the Rain 

Halfway through, a dogged rain 
sluiced down, skin-slapping 
and unseasonably cold, slopping the soil 
at our shoes, rilling the holes 
with brown puddles showing plashed 

glimpses of the sky’s broken gray. 
Then he pitched in, fell 
to his knees in the slick mud, 
splayed roots and sickened color 
of his own hands in the holes so we, 

sinking, too, in the slime and shivering, 
could press soil around them and pour 
in root starter he’d mixed in one of his womb 
shaped flasks. All this, near the end 
of his five years’ tenure in hell, 

an existence in which every breath and move 
meant suffering. And you stood by, 
nervous at his exertion, suffering it, 
the way a child must suffer forever 
the mystery of his mother’s love 

and pain—suffering it, 
because it was for you. 

Fall Canker 

In October, rose blight 
overran the roots and stems, 
flecks infecting the skin 
like scabs or tiny cancers. 
Still, the night he died, 

your crimson-tipped buds, 
pronged the vitiated light. 
You hovered in the dark hush 
of a room filled with flowers 
and the presence of the dead, 

and everyone marveled. 
But, young, at odds with life, 
and bewildered by such easy 
grace, how could I accept 
your faith, unless I’d seen 

your pain, your terror? 
Two years now. Mother, 
the canker this fall 
has taken the rose buds. 
Only so much corrupt life 

can be cropped away by cold, 
well-meaning shears.

A Place for Roses 

The spring moon sheds 
its bloodless gray tonight, 
and the pruned thorns spread 
their dead stick shadows 
like a hand of blessing 

across the prints 
from your canvas shoes. 
All day you spent digging 
about the roots, loosening 
the soil, turning in 

bone meal and nutrients. 
Tonight, something in me 
stirs at the memory 
of the ruddy leaf shoots, 
furled and tender skinned, 

that now are horned 
and liverspotted and stiff. 
After your day of labor 
I can almost believe 
these lopped, ill limbs 

will rise up 
and bear life.