A new year of trees, and in the yard
the rosemary is trying to live again,
its spines broken, darkened from the frost.
I don’t know whether to water it
or leave the plant to fortune.
Sometimes my love can drown a thing.
When my mother lay convalescing
I wasn’t sure how to be a daughter,
if I should press another cup of tea into her hand,
vine myself around her wintery bed,
or go on washing dishes in the kitchen,
each plate a cold, white stone.
In the new year of trees, we are meant
to eat dried apricots, figs made delicious
by their thirst, dates shriveled to such sugar.
But arid, the rosemary only drops
its needles in the dirt. How can I help it
last beyond this season of uncertain winds,
the chill that enters the garden overnight
like rough fingers dragging across branches.
My mother walks so well now. It’s easy
to forget most of us are closer to impatiens,
soft-petalled, tender at extremes.
We are blossoms that need a partial shade.
We make no promise of returning every year.
Jehanne Dubrow is the author of ten poetry collections, a craft book, and four books of nonfiction, including most recently Frivolity: A Defense. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, including New England Review, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares.
