Transplants
Wanting privacy, my mother
fingered the slender, grey leaves,
decided to plant her longing
at the edges of the flat half-acre. She pitied
her new home’s raw earth, freshly exhumed
from a dead farm, veiled with drying sod.
A nursery clerk sold her on these
invasives — They’ll be 10, 20 feet,
in no time — the city girl believed.
Russian olives: They were pale,
yellow-bloomed, exotic, obviously
from elsewhere. Transplants.
Maybe even the name: “Russian,”
like her grandparents. She mourned
Manhattan’s buzz while crickets sang her
loneliness. She wasn’t sure how she awoke
at 23 in a new split-level, two kids growing
despite her sporadic tending. These sprouts her
only try at transforming her blank exurban canvas —
her hours digging and planting soon overtaken
by unmown grass, blooming weeds.
Her husband drove nights, slept days.
There was no one to help protect her
bushlings, twined and choked by fierce natives.
The neighbors shook their heads,
trimmed box into spheres. Taking
permission only from her shadowless
meadow, she sunned, slender and browning
her olive skin in her pale yellow
bikini of budding knots, exposed.