Mary Jo Salter's "Peonies"

Beyond the merely pink and pretty, a great flower poem can deliver a powerful challenge, or, as in Mary Jo Salter’s “Peonies,” an uncanny arrival at floral abundance that is only in part familiar—it blooms with startling freshness in the right language.


Peonies

Heart-transplants my friend handed me:
four of her own peony bushes
in their fall disguise, the arteries
of truncated, dead wood protruding
from clumps of soil fine-veined with worms.

“Better get them in before the frost.”
And so I did, forgetting them
until their June explosion when
it seemed at once they’d fallen in love,
had grown two dozen pink hearts each.

Extravagance, exaggeration,
each one a girl on her first date,
excess perfume, her dress too ruffled,
the words he spoke to her too sweet—
but he was young; he meant it all.

And when they could not bear the pretty
weight of so much heart, I snipped
their dew-sopped blooms; stuffed them in vases
in every room like tissue-boxes
already teary with self-pity.

Excerpt from A PHONE CALL TO THE FUTURE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS © 2008 by Mary Jo Salter. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.


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