SANDY COOMER

Begonia

After the incident at church, you pay more attention to the garden,
especially the plant growing wild in the dirt beside the manse.

Wide, well-veined leaves of soft green disguise the blood-red reverse.

Weeks ago, you thought begonia but waited until the delicate pink blooms
lifted out of the fold to name it. You drop to your knees to study the botany

of begonia and wonder about the need to name everything,

to label it, when so much is unknowable—ordinary, steady on one side,
bloody on the other. You still have nightmares about the shooter,

who everyone said was a swell guy until they saw the reverse of him—

the dead woman in the parking lot, the pastor with bullets in his arms.
How can you name the flight that took your legs even as your heart

pleaded go back, find your friends? You confess courage is two-sided,

fragmented, a label only found in the dirt. You kneel in the drifting shade
and try to understand yourself, which means to understand humanity,

which cannot be understood, no matter what name you give its wildest part,

the hard, blunt face of its blooming.