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Poetry

Blue Veronica

Denise Gilchrist
issue four

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I don’t want to talk about monarch butterflies

how there’s not enough milkweed

for their larvae to feed

how old farmers’ fields are dwindling

scraped to create space 

for retail therapy and condensed living.

There’s land at the junction of the Olde Village Shoppes 

and Eagle Valley Square 

where the backhoe lumbers and hums

except when it sits like a sculpture 

in a ragged meadow.

My mother called crying about her decline. 

I’m feeling old without my bitterness.

When I turned twenty-five, I became a gardener

to slow down time. 

I cut my hair short, grew 

a stockwoman’s body—

slinging bails of peatmoss

hoisting a pickaxe over my head 

impressing the men as I broke ground.

In late summer, millions of monarchs 

returned to the blue veronica.

Orange and black wings flashing 

sipping nectar, fueling their bodies

before migrating to Mexico.

As I rested on the bank regaled 

by the men swinging their arms

to shoo away the fluttering,

I saw a coiled snake 

napping at my trowel’s edge.

Neither one of us flinched.