Abbie Kiefer

Growing Season with Losses

We keep pulling the past
owner's trash from the ground: 

rope, rusted screws. Necks 
of bottles packed with our stony soil. 

Each time we dig, exhuming 
shards. We collect them in a pail, 

caution the kids: careful, be 
careful.  As if we could turn the earth

gently. When your mom died, 
we were putting in perennials 

I’d planned for all winter. Plants to prevail 
on the eroding slope. Salvia 

and creeping thyme. Wax-leaved sedum 
that doesn’t even need settling. Let it spill; 

it still grows. Your mom wanted to stay 
at the lake, so you researched urns 

made of peat and salt. They had stars
and reviews: Elegant. Substantial. Sank

too soon.  You found a depth chart, the most
swallowed spot, and we paddled to it,

the kids thickened by life jackets. They spiked
the small waves with salvia. Our salvia 

thrives. We’ve lost some sedum 
to the deer. When it rains, the ground gives up

more glass. We pluck it out, wait
and watch. Make jam-jar bouquets — 

stems so fresh from the dirt 
they surely remember it. Reach for it still.

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Abbie Kiefer's work is forthcoming or has appeared in Boulevard, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, RHINO, The Southern Review and other places. She has twice been a semifinalist for the 92Y Discovery Prize and volunteers as a reader for The Adroit Journal. Find her online at abbiekieferpoet.com.