Geranium and Cabbage

by Melissa Poulin

geranium sits beside the bookcase

familiar hand-shaped

leaves in miniature cling to the stem

a brown husk left

for dead in a corner of the yard

brought inside on a whim it

patiently knits itself

back into being

beside the Karamazov

and Levertov a bird guide with its cracked

spine Meditation for Dummies barely

dented my tendency to bring myself

into every frame make of everything

a mirror

searching between the leaves

for absolution plunging my hands into soil

a heretic doused with holy water from the hose

I fidget on the floor with garden variety prayer

dividing ora et labora like pulpy bulbs

of iris sifting golden potatoes from earth

all of it gift a resurrection

you could blink and miss

I work as hard

as any cabbage. I've been told

by loved ones who tell me

not to worry so much not to try

so hard to try to let the light

unfurl me

cabbages I know

I've hefted dense heads into my cart countless times knowing

full well I'll eat half

of a half of that baffling

landscape cued into greenness

by warmth and light cold

and dark nourishment

and hunger all the shadows

this world makes

of love I have to ask

what rescue is

---

Melissa Poulin is a writer, wife, and mother in Portland, Oregon. Her poems and essays appear in Ruminate Magazine, Relief Journal, Water~Stone Review, Hip Mama, Coffee + Crumbs, Empty House Press, Entropy Magazine, and Writers Resist, among many other publications. She is the author of a chapbook, Rupture, Light (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and co-editor of the 2014 anthology Winged: New Writing on Bees, proceeds of which benefitted pollinator conservation efforts. You can find more of her work at melissareeserpoulin.com