MEMORIES

 

Memories

Late,

In a dark night’s blue

Spotting the bright crescent moon,

Remembering the passions of love

And

What happiness was,

Time collapsed.

So many long years ago,

In the beginning,

He opened the gate

With its barren gray wood’s

Uninviting severity

To find its brother parity beyond the barrier

In a large spread of dead earth,

Whose only life was tenacious crabgrass,

Red clay

And

A dearth of beauty.

The way he met the ugliness of life

Was to create,

To garden

To attend the seasons

And

In his imaginative reasons,

There grew lush creations

 Seeming magical in splendid

Color, texture, fragrance,

Black earth for sand

Water for drought

And

The dance of Gaia in his joy

At rejecting sterility and neglect.

I learned to expect as new

Every day

An enchanted nectar paradise

Celebrating hummingbirds, butterflies, bees

And

Varieties of these soldier-angels of nature.

Finally, at the end

After invasive traumatic care

He returned home,

Confused, frightened and wary of place.

“You are home my love,” I said.

He stood in front of his bedroom window

Overlooking his garden

And

Whispered:

“Wow.”

His last words.

Days later he was dead,

His ashes buried in the rose garden.

Passing this spot every day alone in grief

At dawn

I pause on the way to duty

 thinking, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

While

Stirring in the heart,

At the beginning of a new spring

A permanent sadness recalls

A distant memory of letting go:

While a dove flies into the storm,

‘Lost in Time,

Like all those tears in rain.’