Wooded fibers fine as cornsilk Weave through these iris husks I'm handling. None passed away—they died here in the sun-warmed earth I dig in. Transplanted crowded colors that my neighbor tried to trash for clashing rowdy with her roses: I, fierce salvager, knew a sudden need. I need their laughing panting furred-gold faces, their silent swiftly sworded leaves. I need especially their bulbs: whited grotesque undergrowth, their ugly turnip tubers kin to megalomanic tumor X'ed, irradiated, above left ear, that re-invading burst my father's brain. I gently pry, then rip them, tear. Sorrowing, I excise each from the other in their cleaving, ever-widening bed. Resistant, slowly yielding, stunted things stubborn in the soil. I yearly need to bury fibrous tubers: in an exercise of meager faith I will us both to bloom. Caroline P.M. West is a senior majoring in English from American Fork, Utah. She has been published in BYU Today and Exponent II.
