The Begonia
It started with a leaf rescued,
or should I say, volunteered
from a neighbor’s front yard,
waxy green with white spots
from beneath a pink umbrella of flowers—
pinched from a mother plant
and mothered on my way home
admiring its succulent fold of leaf
as it took bows in a plain glass jar rooting
beneath the kitchen light fixture
near the onions and garlic
giving it a reason to hold on
but the plant hardly needed a reason—
the leaf knew exactly what to do
broke out in a downward spoke
along the edge of its stem, and
in a few days, a wealth
of white hair conquered the water
smothering the glass in sweet kisses
until its affection knew no bounds
colonizing the jar in white threads
requiring me to remove the stem
to a nation pot of clay where it
put up house for the next generations.
For years, the plant thrived on the patio
doing nothing more than grow bigger
in the shadowed protection
of a neighborly tree, flowers hanging
like Christmas decorations every spring
and throughout the year, until a strong wind
got to it, knocked it over, pieces strewn everywhere—
the plant, the pot, and the roots
spread out like a terrible suicide on the red bricks
as I bent down on my knees salvaging
whatever pieces still remained.
It had just gotten too big.
No one mourned the begonia more than I did,
stolen from its mother that many years ago,
remembering how I’d pinched it between two fingers.