Root-bound

              She must have known 
              the day she brought the pale
              tulips home from a cold
              crowded market, in pots ready 
              to burst, and placed them on her 
              dresser where they sat and stared
              blank-faced out the bedroom 
              window, that death grew.  
              Regardless, 
              she thought she could spare 
              their last sweet breaths
              from hungry masses; from fingers
              feeding on the passing beauties,
              from siblings who'd grip
              the fragile heads
              like corners of old pillows
              dragged behind.
              The warm-air blanket
              wrapped around the stemflutes
              must have choked the buds; 
              they opened wide 
              like panicked lungs
              desperate to swallow 
              the sky cut off by glass,
              then shrunk like linen 
              thrown into a dryer.
              When she took them out again,
              their petals looked like starved stems:
              peaceful, folded with each other,
              as if to hold their lack
              of unbound light,
              as if they loved the lack,
              as if it were the garden.


              C.J. Sage

     

              *         *          *
      
      
              about the poem:

              "I wrote 'Root-bound' as my own response to an exercise I'd made up 
              for a group of participants in a poetry group I hosted.  I don't recall the
              details of that particular exercise anymore, but it was generally to write 
              a poem which juxtaposed something rooted in the ground -- literally or 
              metaphorically -- with something that spends its time in the air.  As you 
              can see (though I tried to follow my own instructions as far as possible), 
              what issued forth for me went a bit off track -- reminding me that part of 
              the art is being willing to relinquish absolute control of the piece once 
              it begins to grow itself."



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