When I Am Asked
by Liesl Mueller

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leave fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
on the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.