American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 23
Dead-heading African Daisies
Sophia Gray
Adele sees her mother crosslegged
on the gray rock wall reaching,
plucking off dried up blooms.
Sees? –that’s what she’s
looking at. Who knows
what a one-year-old
really sees. Her mother
gives her a brown whatchamacallit. Adele’s pleased, holds it
thumb and index, pinkie curled.
Gone—stigma, style, egg-yolky
pollen, she’s left with peduncle, sepals—
the stem. That’s what she grasps.
Later her mother gives her
a mistake she’s made—a daisy
whole, green-stemmed
with yellow petals and a slender
leaf, torn away too soon.
Adele is pleased.
“Old blooms have to go,”
her mother explains, “so
the new can flower.”
Adele’s eyes search
her mother’s face
for clues. She
hardly understands
a word. She understands
so much: Adele likes
to pick flowers, knows
she mustn’t; she does
and doesn’t, following
a logic not so different from
the plan that runs the world.
American River Review
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