Three Bonsais


The non-fruiting ficus
you sent me
had outgrown its pot.
It was predeceased by
the miniature orange
you got to make me feel
like Mae West, replicating
her backstage boudoir,
its perdition and jest.
This followed the death
of the pygmy juniper
that caught mites and rot.

And so I set to chart a fresh
botanical course:
researched what
would bring the bonsai back
from the brink,
shrank from minutiae
and YouTube guides
that could only be described as
tea ceremonies, sacred and complex.

I ordered some dirt and a shallow
dish, waited for fertilizer 
in the maternal sense,
found myself having to pry
the clotted earth out
with a humble fork.
I sent you a picture afterward
even though we hadn’t spoken
 in four months.

You called, and the next day
again I told you to go away
because you had already, before
anything I said or didn’t do:
the wabi-sabi of what
we always knew.

Rosemarie Koch

If you have any comments on this poem,  Rosemarie Koch would be pleased to hear from you.