Martha Silano

What Isn’t Broken

~ after Dorianne Laux

The fog-tinged sky. The slatted sunporch floor. My mother’s brooch 
in the shape of a heart, its shattered seashells spray-painted gold. 
Unbroken the deep blue Brodiaea, its thin stems 

waving in the meadow below the apple tree I want to call unbroken, 
though its trunk is split near the top. An antler dangling 
from a rusted pulley. Early spring’s trestled snap peas,

the many-branched Doug fir beside what was once a listing barn.
Decades ago, the kernels of corn I instructed my son to drop 
into small, dark holes. Each blackberry

foraged from the brambles near a van we no longer own. 
The spiderweb in the sword fern. Did one of my ribs
shatter? Did my little brother crack it 

when he pushed me out of bed? I couldn’t inhale without sharp pain, 
told my mother (her silence: entire). What’s held together 
despite the physics of entropy. A bouquet 

of oxeye daisies, heal-all, purple clover. This daughter 
sipping Coke Starlight. The path to the upper house, 
the swing that renders her dizzy.

Vega, Altair, and Sadr. The entire swan on a moonless night, 
Cygnus on her flight across the summer sky. Deneb, 
its 1,900-year-old light, its diameter 135 times 

the size of the sun. So much stays whole. Gravity keeping books 
and pens on a table, the sun and moon where they need to be, 
two bumble bees whining at the window. 

All of it complete, including the now-and-then call of a flycatcher:
ee-oo-eet? This beating heart, so not my mother’s, especially 
those final days when all she had was her garden, 

the iris bulbs she divided, gifted to distanced friends. My heart—
so unlike these cereal bowls and dinner plates—
lacking a single chip.

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