Daffodil: Narcissus (Amaryllidaceae) “Rita Dove”
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- DaffodilNarcissus (Amaryllidaceae) “Rita Dove”
My mother phones to tell me it’s time for planting; my father has built a bed—
nothing fancy, mind you, wooden planks painted yellow. That’s nice, I reply,
dipping my brights as I slow for a curve. And since it’s your flower she goes on, it seems the least
you ought to do is come homeand plant it yourself. Home, I say, marveling. Back, she amends.
I brake for a deer, one of the many who ravage seedlings in our neighborhood— silent marauders by moonlight
crowding the edge of the road as if to declare This was our home onceand we’ll eat anything we please.
All right, I tell her. I’m on my way. I strike out the calendar, pack sweaters and music, snacks and a Thermos
for the drive north—eight hours fast-forward into autumn where my father stands in a baseball cap,
arms crossed, surveying his handiwork. A picture frame set in the dirt, I think, kissing his cheek [End Page 509]
as I take the trowel and get down on my bad knee to dig. Not too wide, he says, but make it deep—four to six inches.
The bulb is hairy, wizened like a baby chick. I place it beak-first into its new home, gently spooning the earth back in
like the last child at the beach who lingers as the day cools, wanting to leave everything as she found it,
patting the sand down, making it right. [End Page 510]
Rita Dove is the editor of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2011, paperback edition due out in the fall of 2013). The most recent of her nine poetry collections are Sonata Mulattica (2009), American Smooth (2004), and On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999). A book of short stories, Fifth Sunday, was published in 1985 in the Callaloo Fiction Series. Her novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992) was widely acclaimed as a coming of age tale, and her drama The Darker Face of the Earth was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Royal National Theatre in London, among many other venues. In 1998 the Boston Symphony debuted her song cycle “Seven for Luck” with music by John Williams, under the composer’s baton. United States Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995 and recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Thomas and Beulah, Rita Dove received the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama, making her the only poet ever honored with both awards. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
