A Gardener’s Winter Boyhood Plants

On the white slope above our brick house
A prickly dark holly stood amidst the snow,
Bristling berry red
Snipped cuttings swept kitchenward in mom’s wicker basket
To mix with fragrant fir fronds, sweet cedar sprigs
Blown down from the bigger trees in the winter winds
Of last night’s storm
While we slept safe in our beds, the amber
Pine-wood walls cradling

Our tree-house maple (in October producing great piles of big yellow leaves
we’d land in face first after launching down the hill)
Stood now December-naked, smooth, grey-green graceful and still
in the winter cold.
That biting cold made the rhododendrons’ leaves droop like dogs’ ears in their beds,
but on our warm side of the pane
White Amaryllis and bright Poinsettia
shone brighter than the spitting hearth fire.

Garth Gilchrist

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