by Stephanie K. Merril
My mother’s pandemic life now is documented
in virtual space on the nursing home website
& today everyone is planting seeds in little peat pots.
Mother’s pot is empty, the seed packet
unopened on the table, her hands still clean,
her confused gaze squinting at the camera.
She does not know what to do.
All the other elderly people are smiling their dirty hands
proof that their peat-pot-plots will grow.
I want to cry out through this computer screen
I want to tell everyone about the cucumbers
about the tomatoes about the green beans bursting
in Mother’s gardens from all her seasons before.
I want the person behind the camera to get it right
against that barren table with the still-sealed seed packet,
the empty dirt ready for planting. We are farmers!
I want to shout Doing the work of the world!
& I want to ask you, Mother, how you could ever wilt
to be so small & I want to tell everyone that you are a work horse
hoeing, weeding, harvesting, freezing and canning these seeds
so tiny & so huge outliving you in your frailty in your history.
Your glance at the camera pleads with me to help you plant
the mums in October, the geraniums in May. Your muddled
shrug calls forth a truce in me now the work of the world
is germinating in you, sprouting & blooming in me &
I see you through this glass screen the most beautiful person I have ever seen
your eyes filled with the blossoms of yellow summer squash
climbing upwards on the vines of July.
Stephanie K. Merrill is a retired high school English teacher now living the writer’s life which involves reading, walking, ferns and mosses, cats, tea, and a little writing. She lives under the dark night sky in the arroyos on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Her most recent publications include poems in The Rise Up Review, Blue Heron Review, and Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art (Issues Two and Four). She has work forthcoming in UCity Review. Stephanie K. Merrill is a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee.
