Daisies
.
That fourth spring, an army of sprouts
gathers troops for battles ahead,
annual droughts we call summer.
But summer comes and goes with only
a single stalk: one short, sad daisy
who blooms as long as she can
a drowning girl
face up, eyes wide
pleading move me before I die.
Like my four-year-old sister when my mother
walks away and I am twelve and splashing cousins
and laughing and I see nothing, nothing
until she is all I see
arms punching water, legs kicking
the clear blue and then I am there
swift as a scoop and she’s throwing up
grape soda and chlorine water on my chest
but I am holding her, kissing her
and my mother is nowhere until she yanks
my sister away and spanks her wet bottom
for not wearing floaties in the deep end.
Some plants need division. Pry us out
of crowded, familiar ground, sever us
from the mother plant. Clean and untangle
our limbs and plant us somewhere new.
We hope for safe soil. Still, the gardener
takes a risk as she lifts us from earth.
We will lose a few leaves, grow more slowly
next spring, but we save ourselves
certain death drowned by our own roots.
Whitney Schmidt is a teacher, writer, and amateur lepidopterist with a passion for poetry and pollinators. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal, Mantis, The Banyan Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. She lives near Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband, two rescue pups, and various moth and butterfly guests.
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