No one could have expected it—least
of all me—which plant in the garden
would grow the longest
tap root. “I’ll just be a minute,”
I said, and stood the shovel in
the ground, standing on it
like a stepladder, in the maple’s
surge of new painted leaves. I stove
and dug. I left off the shovel
and with my hands began to pry
the thing up from the dirt. Five
fingers clutched me back. Dry
scrapings gripped the ivy. And then
I remembered its name, Gypsophila,
and thought of the children
grabbing my sleeve on the Ponte Sisto,
their bright rags like the regalia
of leaves now dropped into
the garden, grasping and pulling
until I felt we would all fall
together, drowned, mewling
into the Tiber, back through silt,
through bitumen, to the heart's burial
in the earth, dense milk
white breath rising like clouds or
stars in the cold Roman air—
like clouds, or like flowers.