Perennial
by Annette Sisson

Returning from town, my mother guides her car
into roadside gravel, steps out, pulls on gardening

gloves, snips milkweed with her kitchen scissors,
45-degree angles just above the nodes. At home

separating floss from seed, she tells me milkweed
reminds her of her father who died eight years ago

last July, a month before I was born. From this harvest
she sets aside seeds to plant right away, hoping

they’ll stir in spring. Others she dries on trays, then
tucks them away to poke into soil when winter

thaws. With luck seedlings will pop up by June,
flowers and monarchs the next summer. She collects

these seeds each October–uses what remains
as decoration, arranges empty husks into spindly

fall bouquets, filtering in sumac, goldenrod, Joe Pye
weed. When November comes, she layers the table

with newsprint, plucks the pods from their sticks,
hauls out glue, string, glitter and paint, her metal can

of buttons, scraps of fringe, braid, bits of rickrack.
We rub the hulls smooth with cloth, fashion ornaments

for the Christmas tree, inking our initials on the curved
backs. She pencils a small monarch on one, outlines

wings and thorax with a magic marker, fills it in
with gold sequins. Against a background of holly berries

and snow, its forewings sparkle. Butterflies don’t live
in winter, I insist. Mama glances away from her work,

says her father told her milkweed contains rare
extracts, and the monarchs who swallow them live forever.

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