The Dark Side of Flowers

I have forgotten how to be hot. A high-pressure system parked itself nearby and we’re having triple-digit temperatures day after day. It has been so long since we had 105-degree afternoons that I don’t know what to do with myself. My office isn’t air-conditioned. I find myself looking around the house, wondering what to do. Do what you’ve done before, I tell myself. But last year’s summer is a terrible smear of memories of my mother’s slide into death, and I don’t know what I did.

One major accomplishment this past week is a new manuscript of my poetry. I submitted the previous manuscript to a few competitions and it didn’t make the cut, so I’ve shelved it. June 30 was the deadline for two competitions hosted by small presses, so I cranked, with the help of my daughter Milo, who sorted through stacks of poems for me with wonderful ruthlessness.

Letters from a Distant God, I titled it. I arranged it in a loosely chronological order so that it tells the tale of struggling to come to terms with a long sense of disconnection with God. It begins with a frightened childhood and an alienated adulthood, then plummets into depression and hospitalization, struggles through my mother’s ballet with Alzheimer’s, and finally arrives in my scarred but hopeful midlife, grateful to the God who has been sometimes so very hard to trust but who has blessed me.

One of the poems I originally included, but later cut from the final draft, is suitable for a place in this week’s Poetry Jam. Jam maestro Poetikat requires dark poetry with a floral theme. I’ve been carefully tending my dahlias for months so they’ll make a good showing in the regional fair's flower competition in a few weeks. The original version of this poem was composed while on a similar mission two years ago.

I Thought I Was the Breath of Life


Planting in my garden
I had thoughts of myself.
I am the breath of life, I thought.
I speak into the soil
and flowers bloom.

Like God I touch the earth
and living things spring up.
I plunge dark matter into the dirt,
and beauty sprouts there.

Blood drips from my hands
and sweat blinds my eyes.
This living sacrifice
calls forth the dahlias
and they rise from the dead!

When the gopher
burrowed into my yard
I became the whore of Babylon
hell-bent on destruction.

I thrust poison into the soil,
my precious soil.
I pumped gas, planted bombs,
baited pincher traps.
Screw nature.
I throbbed with blood lust.

Until I found
that soft brown body
terminally squeezed,
I never knew death
could be so hilarious.