Taproot
Once she could have held anything steady
and safe: a glass of tea, her brother's baby.
Now her hands shake at the weight of a fork.
Yet neighbors still come to her for cuttings
and she shows them how to let a stem breathe
in water, mound the soil round branching roots.
*
After exile she built a house in the new place.
With years the stone walls browned like summer skin.
In her garden, peaches clustered like fisted moons.
Uprooted, any stalk or vine
would whither and die. But if the taproot
is strong, a transplant can live.
*
What she knows is a kernel of darkened sun.
She could tell you how soldiers uprooted trees,
smashed wells; how exposed roots shrivel.
Lifting jars of oil in the kitchen --
rich sustenance from bitter fruit --
her hands tremble with the weight they bear.
*
Sometimes, mounding dirt around new transplants
in the garden, she pauses --
fists knuckling, tenacious roots, into the earth.
Published in The Thistle, December 10, 1997
