Nasturtium    

Nasturtium in a round plastic pot
hung by the front door, the year I left
New York for good. Its soft geranium
leaves pale green, trailing; its bellflowers
fragrant as orange plums. Now I'm packed

to move to another house. Will I remember
the curve of river birch trunks twining
beside the sunporch chaise, the palmlike leaves
caressing screens? I can't bear the smell
of morning hanging here, the way the past
wafts in, its fog ghosts rising. Nothing

so sweet as forsaken apples, my father said,
biting into the core of wild fruit
as we walked the six acres chest high
in hay awaiting its final cutting,
October frost in the air, the season turning
autumn to winter, sharp as a scythe.

We never know where we will find the thing
that breaks our heart, that orange memory,
that perfumed resonance, Nasturtium—
how it murders us with scent,
how it leaves us rocking.