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my Japanese neighbor swears,
the simple rose bay willow
herb is magic, how it stripes
the woods, her window garden-
box with pink, little mushrooming
whorls of color just like the ball
of fire that tore through Nagasaki,
she once admitted, where she lived
as a child. The bodies burst like
pockets of grease inside bacon,
everyone screaming as the ceiling
opened red with death, liquid fire.
What got her through it was a green-
house — her mother took her there
to buy geraniums and a fruit tree —
and when the blast cracked the earth,
trays of willow herbs fell atop her,
the cloy of thick petals in her mouth
and eyes as her mom and the grizzled
gardener grew translucent, then gone.
The unornamented green plastic pot
my neighbor handed me one evening
to celebrate my 27th birthday has since
sprouted willow herbs, three tiny bulbs
the color of a matchhead. I watch them
in a slant of sunlight, wondering if today’s
the day they’ll explode into flame.
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