Plotting the Resurrection

PLOTTING THE RESURRECTION

Old, too long Brooks raincoat,

little, round wool hat, galoshes...

as years went by there was something 

comical, yet touching about Katharine's 

gray appearance on this one day

in the fall she got herself up for laying out

the spring bulb garden.

With diagram and clipboard in hand 

she waddled to the director's chair­-

a folded canvas thing placed for her 

at the edge of the plot where she sat

hour after hour, in wind and weather

as Henry produced dozens of brown bags 

full of new bulbs and a basketful

of old ones ready for the intricate interment.

Small, hunched over figure absorbed 

in the implausible notion

there would, indeed, be another springtime 

with its pinks and greens and yellows, 

oblivious to the end of her own days,

she knew perfectly well was near at hand...

there she sat with her detailed chart 

beneath dying October skies 

plotting the resurrection. 

Betty Spence

Mobile, Alabama

* Poem found in E.B. White's introduction  to his wife's book, 

Onward and Upward in the Garden.