Roots

They couldn't have known, when they preferred the upstart lilac and cut down the hydrangea, that it had prospered there for eighty years--the ice storm had left it pretty tattered. Or known that it had sold my mother on the house, or that I had played in it as a child, and posed beneath it for my wedding photos. That was our story, and now it was their house--and so things go. But they called when the stump began to sprout, and I came to collect cuttings. Slice obliquely beneath a leaf bud, roll the wounded flesh in rooting hormone and press each into a mixture, half sphagnum, half vermiculite. Water and wait. When the cutting resists a gentle tug, there are roots enough to transplant. Then resurrect the past next to grandpa's peony, brought from Pennsylvania when he died, and moved again to this place beside my well.