The Bells of Ireland

the sun before the snow

“Before the Snow,” Beth Kephart, Monotype

We nested lilies in with the bells of Ireland and floated the whole with goldenrod on a day before and after snow in the basement of the house that you are leaving. Your teachings this time were about the sun, how it gives a face and a backside to the bloom, and you required us to forfeit symmetry in favor of

every evanescence. We made plans, in between, the way women do, to transplant your twenty years of planting, to scour your yard clean before anybody new could stake a claim to your way of thinking. It seemed the kindest thing to imagine out loud—your trees sprung up all over town, your flowers tangled in between the uprights of neighbors’ fences. Think, we said, of politics—of how wars might be ended by your roses, of how books might be read beneath the branches of your willow, of how lovers might lie down

within the ocean of your ferns. We’d all go good in the heart and name our children after seeds, and the birds, getting wind of this, would flurry in from South America and stay so that we could attend to their nests for news of architecture. Think of it, we said, as we gave our lilies room to grow, as we turned the bells of Ireland toward the sun before the snow.