They say all flowers are wild somewhere.
Where were we?
Where were we, Grandma, when you said this?
Your voice comes to me
unpretentious and content
from the back seat of the car.
Waves of blooms and stems beckoned to us–
what colors were they?–
along the Texas roadside as we traveled
to see a place you had once been planted.
Your face opened to everyone
in the clapboard church
fed with scripture and small sandwiches.
You reached out to grasp their hands
knowing something about everyone’s roots
well enough to ask after them
and make their faces light with remembering.
You knew, like you knew the deep quiet
of the Tennessee forest floor
you led our childhood feet into
thickets laden with some flower
I’d never seen before or since
its perfume as deep as its red blossom and broad leaves.
What was its name?
You knew like you recognized the person in me
who would adore
the plastic canvas, colored yarn, and real needle you brought me
and the box of sequins, glitter, and fabric scraps under the Christmas tree,
and later, your mother’s thimbles and sewing basket.
All seeds that would grow in me like weeds.
They say all flowers are wild somewhere.
You knew wild.
You let the big black and yellow spiders
weave their homes into the sides of yours.
You returned leftovers to the earth
through compost and wandering raccoons.
You knew somewhere.
You had camped in it, driven by it, sent a postcard from it,
marked it on the map.
And you knew flowers–
that the most surprising ones are
the ones we pot on the stoop,
cut to bring to the kitchen table,
propagate and plant in gardens year after year
home after home.
These, too, keep their secret connection
to their other selves—
their ancestors, their untamed sisters
rooting into and springing out of the wild places
which belong to them.
Narrative Pull 