Patrick Hicks - Peonies

After work, he was in the garden
while I was growing up—
bottle of beer, tie unloosened,
ambling through twilight,
watching flowers, testing tomatoes.

After I moved away to college, and then
Ireland then Germany then Spain,
my father gave me updates:
the height of the sunflowers,
rabbit problems, pumpkin density,
the state of the peonies.

Strange, I thought.
Never a word about work,
or politics. Just reports on the mundane
miracles blooming in the backyard.

Years after my years away,
with a freshly inked mortgage
and a ring around my finger,
my father appeared one day—
six-pack in one hand,
peony bulbs in the other.

“Your great-grandmother planted these
in Ohio. Shoots were given to my mother,
who gave some to me. And now—”
he placed the plastic bag in my hands
“I’m giving these to you.”

So now, after teaching
young adults how
to rewrite their poems,
I sometimes call my father.
I talk about the height of the beans,
what the rabbits are nibbling on,
and how the peonies are coming up through the soil,
how they are defying gravity, how they are bursting
with impossible color.

Patrick Hicks

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/peonies-2/