I don’t post nearly as many Saturday Snippets as I used to; that was something I started when I was housebound, healing from a broken shoulder and unable to garden. But I have just discovered a poem, “Transplanting”, by Lee Ann Roripaugh, and it took my breath away, especially the fourth section:

4. Dalmatian

There is an art to this. To shish

kebab the varnished pit of avocado

on three toothpicks above a pickle jar

of cool water, tease down the pale

thirsty hairs of root until one sinewy

arm punches up and unclenches its green

fisted hand, palm open, to the sun.

To discern the oniony star-struck

subterfuge of bulbs, their perverse

desires, death-like sleeps, and conspire

behind the scenes to embroider

the Elizabethan ruffles and festoons

of their flamboyant resurrections.

To trick the tomatoes into letting down

their swelling, tumescent orbs

in the cottony baked heat of the attic

until their sunburnt faces glow

like round orange lanterns under

the crepuscular twilight of the eaves.

Unwrapping the cuttings of succulents

from their moist, paper-towel bandages,

and snugging them down into firm

dimples of dirt and peat, coaxing up

the apple-green serpentine coils of sweet

pea with a snake charmer’s song to wind

around the trellis and flicker their quick

pink-petaled tongues. The tender slips

of mint, sueded upturned bells of petunia,

and slim fingers of pine that pluck

the metal window screen like a tin harp

by the breakfast nook where my father

stirs his morning coffee and waits

for the neighbors’ Dalmatian to hurl

itself over the back fence and hang,

limply twisting and gasping on the end

of its chain and collar like a polka-dotted

petticoat, until my father goes outside

and takes its baleful kicking weight

in his arms and gently tosses it back

over the fence into the neighbors’ yard.

Year after year, the dandelions

and clover are weeded out, summers

come and go, and roots stubbornly inch

down around the foundation of the house—

labyrinthine, powerful and deep.