In My Brother's Garden
By Jennifer Saunders
After David Baker 1. Last night's storm drips from the redbud. Droplets stutter in the morning breeze and dot the patio, bedazzle the grass. The rabbit's ears twitch when the blue jay— screecher, dive-bomber, cat-chaser— emerges from its nest in the pine to forage among the perennials as last night's storm drips from the redbud. 2. In the shady corners of the garden, foxglove thrives, pointing its purple way skyward, towering over the spreading hostas, their white-rimmed leaves. Their drooping leaves. Beside them the rabbit trims the clover, pink-white poms disappearing into her rapidly working jaws. Sun on the grass. In the shady corner of the garden, foxglove. 3. I have so much yet to reconcile. Sun and shadow. I wish I understood how to make a garden thrive. How to account for the shifting seasons. Drought and cicada emergence, the emerald ash borer. Ten years of my brother's labor to green this plot that draws the rabbit, a pair of cardinals, the jays. Here, raised beds; there, a shade tree. Patient years. I have so much yet to reconcile. Shadow, sun. 4. How to account for the shifting seasons? Sometimes, even in the face of care, things don't thrive. Rabbits eat the hostas down to the roots, the jays strip bare the raspberry bush. Blight migrates northward. I wish I'd understood how long a root system takes to secure the soil, how many seasons of growth pass beneath the surface. Now, trumpet vine and rabbits. Last night's storm dripping from the redbud.
Jennifer Saunders (she/her) is the author of Tumor Moon, winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest (forthcoming from Concrete Wolf, 2025) and Self Portrait with Housewife (Tebot Bach, 2019). A Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Orison Anthology nominee, Jennifer's work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Poet Lore, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of Stained: an anthology of writing about menstruation (Querencia Press, 2023) and lives in German-speaking Switzerland.
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This is gorgeous.