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My mother used to cut the stalks
a month before the weather turned
and force the blooms, an early sign
of spring. So when I saw the tiny
grey cat feet all wrapped in plastic
by the check-out line, I brought
them home and stood them in tall vases
where I let them stay for weeks,
although each bud had sprouted yellow
balls of pollen, and pale leaves
had grown from each long slender stem.
My son was thrilled to see them change.
At last, an afternoon he was
asleep, I took them out and found
the cramped white roots that reached for life.
But what to do with them? I can't
remember if my mother planted
hers-we lived in wetlands, near
a stream, perhaps they simply grew
like skunk cabbage and raspberry canes.
And when I searched for answers, all
I found were tales of why they grow
beside the water: once a farmer's
cat had birthed a litter, more
than he could keep, and so he threw
the lot into the river. There
a willow heard the mother cry,
and reached her trailing branches in
to catch the kittens. But my own
unhappy plants, unrescued, do not
thrive despite the rich wet soil
around their roots. These throwaways
are past my help. I'll wait a year
and try a different spot, or longer
roots. Perhaps I'll ask my mother.
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Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com
Susanna Lang was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award in
1999 for a poem published in The Spoon River Poetry Review. She
has also published original poems and essays, and translations from the
French, in such journals as Kalliope, Sport Literate, Southern
Poetry Review, Chicago Review, New Directions, and Whetstone,
as well as online at the Red River Review. Book publications include
translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language,
both by Yves
Bonnefoy.
In addition to writing, she teaches seventh and eighth graders in the
Chicago Public Schools.
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