Digging through my mother’s drawer of cast-off seeds,
I looked for flowers to plant in an old water tank.
She had given up on these varieties,
but I could not turn my back on their potential.
 
Early on the morning of the perfect planting day,
while the dew was on the grass
and the mourning doves were calling,
I took up my miniature implements
and plowed my tiny field
just as my father worked his larger one.
My fingers were the drill,
planting each kind of seed in a perfect row.
Last I played God,
sending a gentle shower of rain from above,
not forgetting to make the rainbow in the end.
 
Yet even with all this care, disaster struck.
Baby’s breath came up everywhere,
bursting out of its own row
and smothering the feeble plants
that straggled out from tired seeds.
By the end of the summer,
a snowdrift of white blossoms
tumbled from the tank
and over the edge to the lawn below.
 
To me this was a failure,
but strangers congratulated me
on my unrestrained abundance.


From The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line Press, 2015).
Used here with permission.