" MY MOTHER’S PHLOX

To send this to you toward the end of summer,
I was forced to rebuild my desktop.
Not in the old-fashioned way,
With saw and eye laid alongside the board
With some rue in my fingers,
But I wanted to create phlox.
Although, god knows, it can’t be done
In three dimensions, as the earth
Has so easily done it, but who can compete
With the earth? No, I wanted only the words
And they have lost themselves in the fields
Or along the gravel road. It’s just as well.
(Floks) n. pl. various plants of the genus Phlox,
Having opposite leaves and flowers,
With variously colored salverform corolla.
Over the years the phlox have spread
Even into the fields beyond the barn,
Into the edge of the woods, inventions
Of themselves in endless designs…
They exhale their faint perfume summer after summer,
And summer after summer it was my nightlong
Intoxicant. It was my potion, my ragged butterfly,
My faulty memory of my mother
Who was the same age then, as I am now.
As then, I was the same age you are now,
When my mother planted these phlox in my garden.
I’m sending them to you by UPS,
Wrapped in plastic in a proper box.
Take them out and stick them in water;
Dig a good bed and spread the roots.
They need almost no care.
They cast their seed; they thrive on neglect.
Later, they may change like the faces you love,
Ravaged and ravishing from year to year. "

― Ruth Stone , Essential Ruth Stone