Mary Fister

As I sit in my favorite chair on my sun porch on a blustery, chill November morning, I become leveled by the Christmas cactus bursting with magenta blooms, and the salmon one behind it equally vibrant, I can’t help marvel every year at the grand sense of humor these plants have–to erupt in splendor closer to Thanksgiving than Christmas–and to be grateful for their timing because I need a dose of their glory now. It just can’t wait.

I am called back, arrested by, filled with wonder because, as my poem “To That End” states, “an abundance tumbles / despite my care.” That’s the addictive mystery, isn’t it? That all this goes on, this tenaciously resolute cycle goes on, without my intervention. Yet, there’s very few places I’d rather be than down on my knees in the garden–tending, tending, deepening my roots. I do my best to sustain every little slip and tendril, stalk and bud, and they sustain me over a thousand-fold, and for that, I breathe them in deeply, over and over.

These encounters in the garden are sources for so many poems. I am privileged to catch a glimpse of their miraculous dazzle, and I am on a quest to adequately describe the intricacy and beauty that I find, as well as to honor their deep mystery and capacity to instill awe. I know that this is a quest without end, for words can only come so close, and the unknowable must thrive–for without it, I would be less astonished by each unfolding leaf or bud. In my first poetry workshop, we were given a prompt to write about a “privileged moment.” That assignment shaped my sensibility early on because I try to recreate such a moment in my poems, regardless of the subject. That boon is most intense when I become arrested by the stenciled throat of a nasturtium bud when the sun blazes it into a more brilliant gold, or any other chance gift that these plants bestow. It then becomes my joy-filled duty to write about them.