As I water planter after planter
and watch the moisture slowly soak in,
I let my mind set itself adrift.
Moving between areas of shade
and sunny spots, I give more
where needed, yet hold off
where there are signs of wilting
from drowning rather than dehydration.
One of the pair of ornate metal urns
houses healthy white impatiens,
their large petals plentiful,
while its twin is home to a few dying red,
the white indicating that the red
are not draining well enough, I think.
But no, the white lie completely
in the shade, the red in the sun.
I plunge my fingers into the soil of each—
both dusty dry. I sprinkle the white
and douse the red. A day later, in bright
sunshine, I see that my guess was correct,
just as theirs was in the ER years ago
when my 24-year-old son, hardly able
to breathe, asked me if he was going to die,
and the doctors said they couldn’t
figure out whether his lungs suffered from
an infection or an allergen, antibiotics
the proper treatment for one, steroids
for the other, possibly lethal if
gotten wrong. But they guessed right,
and a day later, the sun shone on him
as he played a golf tournament, grabbed
the first-round lead, never looking back.
Jim Tilley has published four full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. Five of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, was published in June 2024.
