HOSPICE ...............................................................................................................................................................JOSEPH A. CILLUFFO

Hospice

Poem by Joseph A. Cilluffo

My son says the garden is dying. Every August, it’s the same. The cucumbers, which had clambered so fiercely up the lattice and across half our garden square, begin to yellow and wilt. The peppers brown. They soften. Tomatoes explode across their vines, manic –they bear more fruit than the days can hold. Look there, I tell him, see that space? Next year’s garden is already growing. Seeds are in the ground, gift of the fallen. We could do nothing and, by June, there would be more tomatoes.

He sees, I am certain, in only two dimensions – what is before him, and what he remembers. We could do nothing. Nearby, my mother dies in slow motion, surrounded by four walls, a window she doesn’t look through, cut flowers. All her words from these last, long months wouldn’t bend a blade of grass. We could do nothing. My son and I uproot the cucumber plants, the peppers. I wish I were strong. Eyes will open to the green and new. I try to picture the garden to come.