Growing Things
Author: Bill Roberts
My grandmother’s garden
Continued to grow,
Wilder and wilder,
Petunias and marigolds and
Pansies peeking through
Weeds grown so thick
The flowers looked like
Prisoners peeking through bars,
Thanks to abundant rain
And my grandmother’s
Inability to leave the second
Floor where she was held
Prisoner in her room
Overlooking the garden,
Things growing wilder
As she too grew weaker,
Choked off from life,
Just like her precious flowers,
By wild, uncontrollable
Growing things.
(Published in the July 2002 issue of Offerings)
Note: Just in the mood recently to write about loved ones lost. I’ve written so much about my dear grandmother and her garden, which was maybe a metaphor of life for her. To watch that garden go the way it did after she began going downhill was another slow death to witness. Oh, if only I had this love of growing things back then that I have now. At least she, Emma Bartlett Boswell Roberts, left me her rich inheritance – the love of working in a garden. Thanks, Grandma.
