A summer poem about my father

Zinnias

I have a photograph from my childhood

of my father, standing in his zinnia garden,

puffed-up and beaming, posing for the camera,

watering hose in hand, surrounded by bursts of color

like blossoms of fireworks he himself lit weeks earlier

in time-lapse, kneeling on the dirt, striking a match

by placing each seed ­underground,  slow fuses

brought to life as white-hot shoots – pushing skyward,

growing green in a thick tapestry of tall arcs, swelling,

opening finally in brilliant explosions of red, yellow, orange – even purple,

to detonate around him like a fourth-of-July celebration

of his skill in gardening them forth into the world:

for a brief moment forever he stands proud,
a pyrotechnic God among flowers.