The Maynard
Fall 2020

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Miracle Whip

Siblings expire, one by sorry one. Now I find my crown of thorns plant is dying.
Mother would often say to me, tritely: “Getting old, Doris, is for the birds”—
a quaint and reductive kernel of wisdom hulled in simple words.
More water? Or less? I leave the plant store, and the confessional, sighing.
It oughtn’t end this way: me preoccupied with a plant’s remedial,
     spiritual hydration.
And my own. Well-intentioned advice and succour are patiently given, yes,
     but with adumbration.

Friends also continue, alas, to evanesce. And can my Mary’s slipper* now be dying?
I refuse to call it a columbine (though that’s its name, too). Instead of Lourdes,
columbine calls to mind smooth-chinned, rifle-toting boys slouching towards...
well, not Bethlehem. Suburbs. DooM. Miracle Whip. I can smell the bacon frying.
Nor shall I call the plant “monkshood.” Nurturing my delicate Mary’s slipper
     is an oblation.
More water? Or less, now? Can’t someone, anyone, say? Imminent recovery?
     Death and transfiguration?

It’s odd. With my faith shaken and my garden flagging, I’m now told I am dying.
Will there be miracles? Or whips? Blinding white light? Or flames, purifying?
As a small girl I planted Mother’s hulled kernels of simple wisdom. I coaxed up
     the shoots with an unsteady hand but ostensible dedication.
So too, the warm gouts of our parish priest’s gushing seed. “I absolve you,” he said.
     And said. Yet, my dreams presage the hessian shroud of the forsaken.

*Aconitum napellus—known variously (and ambiguously) as “Mary’s slipper”, “monkshood”, “women’s bane”, “wolfsbane” and “devil’s helmet”—is a poisonous, herbaceous perennial belonging to the same botanical family as the columbine. Its tall, erect stems are crowned by large purple flowers, each having at its apex a hollow spur containing nectar. Mary’s slipper and other plants—such as Our Lady’s thimble, Assumption lily, marigold, rose of Sharon, maiden’s hair, lady neverfade and Mary’s tears (to name a few)—are sometimes planted together in devotional Marian gardens tended by the devout.