Forty some odd years ago
my mother took a sprig
of trumpet creeper
from the old plant
in my great grandmother’s backyard,

and now, all these years later,
she brings a piece to us,
swaddled in wet newspaper,
and tells us it will grow and climb
and produce beautiful horn-shaped flowers.

But it hasn’t.

The vine is green and lush,
but there are no flowers
and it doesn’t climb;
it crawls along the ground,
away from the trellis,
and out to where the sun rises and sets
on the wild countryside.
Maybe next year, my mother suggests.
Maybe next year it will scale the trellis,
bring out its trumpets,
and as if it had been doing it forever,
fill the air with silent orange music.