Snipping a straggly stem from one of my kitchen plants 
this morning, I flash on my mother diligently 
wiping the dust off every philodendron leaf, 
watering, feeding, pruning, then propagating or potting 
more greenery for her four rooms. She was never 
delicate with her hands; when I was a kid, she used 
to tear the tops off cereal and baking soda boxes, 
rather than master the instructions. Yet, 
in her old age, her houseplants were lustrous, 
bushy, thriving. 

Two decades after her death, one of her clones 
hangs on in my North-facing nursery window, 
its leaves pale, almost translucent, needing 
something—light? more light? 

Right now, I miss her green too-busy nearness 
feeding and shaping me, pushing my hair 
from my forehead, tucking it behind my ears, 
blessing the top of my head with her stroking 
palm at any odd moment, trying too hard 
to appease my fears. Tomorrow, the slow slide 
of my immobile body into the lonely tube 
of the MRI. And no-one waiting, as if the news 
to come—joyous or dreadful—were her own. 

Judy Kronenfeld

is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022), Bird Flying Through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), Shimmer (WordTech, 2012), and Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths (2nd ed. Antrim House, 2012), winner of the Litchfield Review poetry book prize for 2007. She also has two chapbooks published: Disappeared Down Dark Wells, and Still Falling (The Inevitable Press, 2000) and Ghost Nurseries (Finishing Line, 2005).

Her poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and in such journals as Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, Offcourse, Rattle, Sheila-na-Gig, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verdad, and Your Daily Poem. Her stories are published in The Madison Review, The North American Review, Literary Mama, and other magazines; and her creative nonfiction, in Under the Sun, Hippocampus, and Inlandia: A Literary Journey.

Her work has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, and has also been nominated for Best of the Net. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Stanford University; has published criticism, including a controversial critical-historical study, King Lear and the Naked Truth (Duke University Press, 1998); and is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.

Judy lives in Riverside, California, with her anthropologist husband. Their middle-aged children and four grandchildren live (too!) far away in Maryland.

Author’s website: http://www.judykronenfeld.com/