Читать книгу Dancing at Lake Montebello - Lynne Viti - Страница 17
ОглавлениеHollyhocks in the Alley
A flower from an English cottage garden,
a word hard to wrap the tongue around,
a six-foot-tall stalk with colored orbs, one maroon
so dark it fades into licorice black.
We stood on our godmother’s wooden porch
looking towards the alley that ran alongside her yard.
In narrow garden beds that lined the concrete walkways
tomatoes prospered in the city heat.
We watched the hollyhocks, tall as men.
They loomed week after week
as each bright green bud awaited its turn
to open into a flower with a five-inch span.
We tracked their progress,
counted bees that poked into those flowers.
They weren’t staked — we never saw anyone
stand over them with a watering can.
They took care of themselves till September
when their spent blossoms hardened
into fat seed pods stuffed with black disks.
