Dad's Geraniums Poem by Roger elkin

At first I thought it just frustration
that led him to dismember them, hacking at shoots,
tearing, prising, cutting roots, baring fleshy wounds
aching gapingly into startled light;

or jealousy
held stilled within him: a quiet rage
with his own imperfect shape that he wished to impose
by keeping them cut-down, stunted, half-made;

or a sort of intensity:
a way to check his limping movement.
the same way he inflicted silence on his kids:
a punishment of looks.

I fancied that they winced when he approached.

Yet dared growth:
sticks of stem angling into fresh segments;
fuzzed, velvet leaves, smooth but firm as if mirroring
the duplicity of his act, their musk inhabiting
our breath; and had the soil beneath
trapped by hands of roots, drugged into servitude.
Finally managed crumpled buds,
exploding scarlet mouths that scarred out sight,
agonies of flesh, triumphant in their bumpy flowers
like the knobby bone which lumped beneath his skin.

They’re beauties, son he said.

Then I knew it tenderness. A quest.
And sensed something of the ache
that pulsed within his knee.

There’s shooting pains in growing old.