A Hollyhock That Once Belonged to Stanley Kunitz
Later that week I found it in my right side
pocket. It had begun to bloom, blue. Tissue thin.
To the bottle of carbolic acid went your father.
To brain plaque, the weed of forgetfulness,
went your mother. Still you felt a fondness
for the natural thing, you loved even the mulch,
and the flower of the mallow family, hollyhock.
Come in, you said. From one specimen of the garden
you cut me a sprig, which I pocketed. Taken
from light, from you, from its princedom, a small
Gautama, it was. Then I forgot it was there, down
there in the dark, doing its precise work anyway.
DAVID KEPLINGER is the author of eight books of poetry, recently Ice (2023 Milkweed Editions). Read more.
“A Hollyhock That Once Belonged to Stanley Kunitz” appears in Ice (Milkweed Editions, 2023).