From GLOrious
Family
By Joan Cusack Handler
Take for instance this African Violet bl o o ming its brains out
the tenth year in a row:
shameless in purple— scores of furious faces & voluptuous leaves.
Like me,
surrounded by its family, it’s just happy here
sitting in its white pot
in the middle of its Family room.
& like us, all our plants
have had children:
the pencil cactus has three, two fully grown,
one toddler,
the yuka, just one,
the fiddle leaf ficus, false aralia & rubber more than we can
count —
just ridiculous in their rushtooutdo.
Once upon a time a man,a woman & a boy
were so delirious in love
with the woods, that they
wantedthemcloser, sothey
built a house in the
heart of
the pines. Then
begging the woods
indulgence they asked for a few trees: a small rubber
perhaps,
some fern,
a dracena.
But these
g r e w
TALLer, so
the man, the woman & the boy
built a greenhouse, an A t r i u m
at the Heart of the house: a
H U G E R O O M
with Skylights & Walls of Glass &
old brick & lots of cold well water.
Once inside
the P l a n t s S t r e t c h e d
O u t & Up,
but complained,
theylikecrowdingleavestouching,Hovering even.
So the family went outside,
dug pine, hemlock, flowering plum & filledtheroomtocrowding.
They invited the birds:
ca r d i n a l s
came
some
b l a c k c r o w s.
& they made no attempt
to domesticate their trees
with tea tables & wicker sofas,
only a rocker or two
& a small bench for the child.
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