POEM A DAY – May 3

Found this piece in a ‘rejection’ pile…written in 2020, with a little editing…here’s a re-vision!

woman at a cross garden

I risk damaging my skin to understand
the depths of the miracles making in her shadows
I fail  to root with her

a bristly purple flower blooms in my throat
my inner child wants to apologize
for choosing awe in witness to her blossoming

instead of embracing my own inflorescence
the sun’s fingers gently press on my collarbone
coaxing me back to the now

I am a woman at a cross garden
ever expanding through the light and dark
of childhood wounds 

where yellow flowers 
mingle with black soil
the gift of the zucchini

grows in the arms of dark & light
at first giddy with excitement 
I reach into the sharp-edged

forest of leaves and stems
crack off a zucchini no longer
than the flat of my open palm
 
miraculous – a green goddess birthed
but days later while hoping 
the lettuce won’t die

here it is! a zucchini 
as thick as lumber
as long as my forearm
 
its plump rump mooning me
suddenly my childhood is the garden
me a globe artichoke attempting to develop

beneath her razor-edged canopy
yearning for a thorn a choke a heart
to burst out of me proof that I exist to love her