Grandma married for an orchid
sent by boxcar from Chicago
on the train she’d ridden the prior day:
slender, erect, useless for planting
in girlhood’s passing fields.

Grandpa left the seminary
for the steel mills at eighteen
that his brothers might take
the collar instead, his sister (once,
twice?) decline marriage and
his mother wear black to the grave.

The flower was so exquisite
through the glass, he stopped
to ask its name: Orchidaceae,
genus that blooms in canopies
deriving nutrients from air and rain

_the ornament of funerals,
weddings, and wakes. Then
the call came from the depot:
’lo, Miss Sullivan? There’s a package.

At church, her modest navy hat
was lost among the nodding pews
of pillboxes and bird perches,
but hers was the only orchid,
pinned to her Easter suit
_a suitor’s promise, though

his first gesture was a bunch
of green carnations, nameless, noteless,
on her desk, a prank that has become
his Saint Pat’s Day signature. Valentine
now has his own carnation,
dyed a lover’s red.

For years, these two have grounded love
in familiars (children, tennis, faith)
where the Common Buckthorn shrub
is exotic, while the orchid hovers
chalice-like behind our family legend_
rococo, singular, sacred, unlikely,

evading the spotlight,
and perhaps for a telling reason:
we may greet orchids in winter
as a promise of the spring, but I trust
no hothouse blossom to forecast
the yield of coming seasons.

Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine
Volume 6, Issue 1