Vigil
Along the side of the house, buds
on the peony, the lilac green and sticky.
In the garden, the magnolia blooms pink,
white, and burgundy.
February's unaccustomed cold revived these,
but stunned the rest. The avocado, brown,
sags against the house. On the trellis,
a thousand dead moths of bougainvilla.
All month, I was up and down
the stairs, my nights
a dialectic of thermometers.
Now January is March. The gardener
hauls away the casualties.
Like small Eurydices, the crocuses,
which this year I turned too late to see,
have gone back into the earth.
I scrutinize my child for illness,
frightening him, scan
the dazed fuchsias for hints of green,
study the resurgence of the lilacs.
Do we risk more when we look
or when we look away?
Susan Kolodny is a retired psychoanalyst and psychotherapist on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Read more.
“Vigil” was first published in her book After the Firestorm, published by Mayapple Press.