Grace Marie Grafton
After the diagnosis
Maybe I should listen for a different music.
More tambourines or a wail in the middle of a song –
one I used to love with its back country twang.
Or a tune I could only hear the way starlight
holds a crystal in its core. They say the aging
mind can grow gardens again if one were to
court stranger blooms. I've always loved
the iris, the poppy. Seed, tuber. Shall I
introduce into my drier beds a cactus whose
name I have not learned? Should I overwater
one small patch to keep alive a giant
fern, ancient botanical citizen, that will
listen to my unanswerable questions as I
sit on the chair I just made out of willow-
withes? Sit, hear the fern teach me
how to play a greener note?
Bio
Grace Marie Grafton is the author of six books of poems, most recently 'Jester' from Hip Pocket Press. Recent poems appear in Peacock Journal, Homestead Review, Sisyphus Literary Magazine and Sin Fronteras, among others. She has taught thousands of children to write poetry through her work with CA Poets in the Schools.