Laura Stanfill

Mother at the Window

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2026: VOL. 41.

The blueberry bushes flush red
for the winter, embarrassed bare.
She needs to leave them alone.
The tall raspberry canes stoop
to play hopscotch in rain puddles.
She needs to cut them short.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe
the day after tomorrow.
It takes an optimist to see this
reclaimed lawn as anything but
chips and mud, to imagine
a food forest begowned in green,
pink currants dangling from
thin stems like a lady’s earrings.
Last summer brought the first sweet
jewels, not enough to fill a belly.
Now, on a short wet day in December,
the mother stands at the picture window,
a dormant puzzle waiting below.
Moldering leaves squish. Ghostly
mushrooms droop. Birds (or bugs)
turn tree collards into lace.
Rose hips wait—orange, jaunty,
and pleasingly round. For tea?
This winter, the mother knows mulberries
can stain her fingers purple;
for fifty years of days, she had no idea.
She almost never found out.
It takes optimism to plant
for a future harvest, to parent
the land and two teenagers toward
the unknown bounty of a future—
to believe in alpine strawberries
that taste like pineapples, the
squish of figs between teeth, the
bitter triumph of overwintered greens

𐫱𐫱𐫱

Laura Stanfill is the publisher of Forest Avenue Press and the author of THE NEIGHBORHOOD DAMES, forthcoming from Ooligan Press in November 2026. She tends her food forest in Portland, Oregon.