sunflower, image by pasja1000, on Pixabay
Mother’s Garden
No secret garden, but
exhibited, instead, each
day on Facebook—different sprouts
and blooms each season:
cucumbers, snow peas, eggplants, zucchini, onions,
peaches, Cherokee purple and indigo rose tomatoes, bitter melon;
tulips, lilies, irises, lilac, pear tree blossom, crimson-
eyed rose of Sharon—precariously clambering trellis vines—potential
harvest, unruined by chipmunks and invisible
insects speckling leaves,
wavering in sun and wind,
curling promises. Sunflowers
towered above me four summers ago,
in Mother’s garden, their seedy, pockmarked faces nodding
golden approval. Each Mother’s Day
memories (already captured) bloom along Facebook timelines—
toward the heart’s unravished harvest.
_______________________
Hiromi Yoshida has been recognized as one of Bloomington, Indiana’s “finest and most outspoken poets,” and was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Wilder Series Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have been published in literary magazines and journals that include Indiana Voice Journal, The Indianapolis Review, FlyingIsland, The Asian American Literary Review, Anima Magazine,and The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. Hiromi loves to contemplate the oddities of life, such as mismatched buttons, abandoned houses, and birdsong in thunderstorms.
August 2021 issue
Excellence
Such beautiful imagery.