i wake to hear my granddaughter
downstairs with her grandmother
chopping asparagus
to add to scrambled eggs
and skinning apples for the fruit salad.
i cling to the silence of the morning
that’s broken by birdsong,
the howl of distant hounds
and the slam of the kitchen door
from my granddaughter’s impatience
to be outside to start collecting the blooms
and leaves of all the herbs
that are growing in the yard.
i focus on the thought
every life is like the blossoming of a day lilly
that comes one day and is gone the next,

i come down the stairs to see
the dining room table is set for us to eat
and the kitchen table full of the flowers
and leaves my granddaughter has collected.
She sits there with my phone
taking pictures of her specimens,
then googling their identification
and medicinal usage.  She checks
with her grandmother to insure accuracy

i dont know how to hold the mystery
i have in my life right now:
the violence of the world,
the suffering of the innocent,
balanced against my granddaughter’s list 
of common plants.
i look down at her
and see that her list is long
and getting longer:
white snakeroot
carnation
white clover
bitter dock
garden mum
kale
China rose
common burdock
perilla
red clover
yellow dock
Sweet William
crimson clover
gooseneck loosestrife 
…