by Mona Lynch -
The girls stood around the hospital bed,
“We bought you a plant in a pot.”
Discharged, I took it to the fertile soil.
Gifted it a mulch of fallen leaves,
Covered it in its warm blanket and waited.
Slowly, my Magnolia Stellate responded
to the warm-hearted sun, the loving moon.
Pulled upwards by the sky, it began to sprout
star shaped flowers, delicate petal-like tepals,
they came even before its leaves.
A dwarf, a treasure with a low profile.
A haven for finches and sparrows.
A friend of the glitzy Cherry.
Its stars lead us out of Winter
into Spring.
Mona Lynch graduated from UCC with an MA in Creative Writing in 2018. She is a poet, a short story writer and memoirist. Her work has been published in the Irish Examiner, The Echo, The Holly bough, and the Quarryman. While working with Travellers in Cork prison, she produced a book of stories and poetry which is in use in their literacy classes. She has been awarded a Munster Literature Centre Mentoring Fellowship.