Poetry/
"Her Wisteria" by Pamela Harrison
Her Wisteria
Beside our house, visible from the table Mother set for all our breakfasts, stood a stone fountain whose barefoot girl waited to fill her urn within the shelter of an over-growing vine—wisteria’s gnarled wood my father pruned each March to spur the growth of pendant flowers and make a fragrant bower for my mother. Lavender haloed the maiden’s head as she leaned dreaming, chin upon her hand, and the over-flowing water fell into a scalloped pool where songbirds flew to slake their thirst all summer long. March again, and the empty unsprung fields are raked by winds that slick the roads. March, the month of Mother’s birth, on the very day the earth’s vernal scale comes briefly to rest, balancing the shortened night with lengthened day. In this pause, when the land lies in its breathless trance, the starving spirit longs for the season’s turn. |
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Pamela Harrison reads "Her Wisteria" |