Pictures in the garden
Joanne Epp
Here is the small me, half as tall
as the delphiniums along the fence.
Here are gladioli in rows,
their tips just over my head.
Cornstalks, not full-grown,
still tall enough for hiding.
An even smaller me who could pluck
an iris without bending down.
A self I don’t remember, who could sit
and look a petunia in the face
but can’t tell me what she saw.
Joanne Epp is the author ofCattail Skyline (Turnstone Press, 2021), Eigenheim (Turnstone Press, 2015) and the chapbook Nothing But Time (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Canadian Literature, and other journals; her collaborative translations with Sally Ito and Sarah Klassen are published in the anthology To Heaven’s Rim. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada).