Rosemary

She was my social worker when I was 10. A knobby, kindly lady who sometimes brought presents, sort of a temporary aunt.

Rosemary is also the pungent herb flavoring the winter vegetables now roasting in my oven. I have a backyard bush of it, fragrant and bouncy after the recent snow, surrounded by soil all boggy with snowmelt. It is as plain as the first Rosemary. And it too brings gifts. Like this poem it inspired one summer.

ROSEMARY

by CJ Krug

Fourteen leaves green the crimp of my palm
Dry and slender magic beans

Lofting a smell of yeast bread, linen,
Comfort and righteousness.

When the fence blew down last winter,
Rosemary pressed the frozen ground, then

Sprang back
With buds most odd and hard

A weed of ladders
To the commonplace miraculous.