“The Begonias” — A Tuesday Poem Reprised
Not a begonia 😉
In the spirit of last Thursday’s post on repaying my arrears to the garden (a repayment that has continued apace 😀 ), I thought it was time to revisit The Begonias, previously featured here as a Tuesday Poem. It was published in moments in the whirlwind, the NZ Poetry Anthology in 2009.
The Begonias
Mal pushes
each seedling down,
grime lining
the cracks in her hands,
eyes narrowed
against the sun’s
low angle. Usually
she crams her hair up
beneath an old hat—the floppy kind
that cricketers wear—
but today the hat is perched
amongst magnolia stellata
and Mal’s hair
is a fraying rope
that follows the curve
of her spine, swinging
to every movement
of bend forward, sit back,
as she pauses, wiping
dirt across her face. “I thought
you didn’t like begonias,”
I say. Mal shrugs.
“Mum always planted them here.
I thought I might as well …”
She seizes the hat,
pulls it low
across her eyes.
(c) Helen Lowe
