Texas Spring During Covid

Shelley Armitage

April 9, 2023

In this moment you have changed,

Bishop’s Cap, to a mouth, unspeaking,

sipping air, ignorant of neighbors

slamming doors, motorcycles like a pack

of wasps, the fart of an old truck.

We are told shelter in place, yet

people rush as the wind picks up

before dusk carrying vibrations

of a border helicopter slicing air.

You stand, slightly swaying

a leaf of peace.

This is your ripening time 

and I am drawn to get the hose

bring water—a small penance

to you, the saint who, green and patient

all winter, restores calm, 

a creative waiting.

One iris is blooming; the world is on fire.

Can we remember the rhizome’s faith

when bloom is done, when we 

are left with only spent stalks?

You are not perfect. You bend

with less than a full head

in this Texas wind.  But beauty

seems even greater when shaped

of harbor and stealth, fear and trembling.

Will your bloom be that old-fashioned purple

or one of the flashy new varieties?  You are

cousin to those irises of old, stubborn still

tubers of time, of memory of sun,

and moisture, and stillness.

I unfurl the hose, bring the holy water.

You tap an inner sweetness

in this supplicant turned steward,

in this gesture of love.

Shelley Armitage is an emerita professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and her most recent book is A Habit of Landscape (Finishing Line Press) to be released in October.  She also has new poems in the forthcoming collection, Unknotting the Line (Dos Gatos Press). Her award-winning memoir, Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place, was a Kirkus Review starred book and featured at the Tucson Book Festival.