Purple Dusk

She tended to her African violets, a jeweled 
setting of amethyst among emerald leaves.

Clay pots placed just so in the living room, one

in the kitchen window. When the sun brightened

in summer, she moved them to darker spaces,

pinched the dying petals, and they bloomed

with wild abandon as if sprung from the rich, black soil  

of the mother continent, still undiscovered by white hands.

She died while mowing the weeds in her back yard.

I inherited one plant. Overwatered, it died too.

I couldn’t accept it wasn’t thirsty as she always was,

sipping iced tea from a sweating glass. The colored

crystal reminded me of the sea where she waded once,

letting the froth cover her red-painted toenails and varicose veins.

I tried to save the violets, set them beneath the carport.

Before they rotted, a single, three-winged weed appeared

in the fertile soil, and the violets bloomed purple dusk again,

renewed and reluctant, stubborn, not yet ready to die.

© Ami Mattison

For Magpie 57

Photo by Tess Kincaid