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The African violet dies.
Though I've moved it
to a new window,
given it the perfect light,
it seems I did too late.
It takes every ounce
of creative energy
to make a new life.
This week the nail beds form,
there will be no poetry.
Last week: all those vertebrae,
a cord as powerful at least
as the one that will be cut.
And yet there were no poems.
Another leaf hangs limp
& takes my plucking.
Grandfather's orchard waits
with the smell of pears & rain
to be poesied another day,
another year perhaps.
There are diapers to be bought
and a little face
pressed against my knee.
A fever to be lowered.
A song, never one I wrote,
to be sung.
In this candled light
in a room too dim
for anything but dreams
I try not to wake the fevered child.
I try to save this violet.
I eat this pear, and try
to remember the smell of that rain.
— Adrienne Veronese.