on a journey home

fingers slip
the neck of a
dried marigold- i shake seed like
gourded maracas

hum soft
a lullaby

let the breeze rustle
trees into a big band boogie - and think back to my

mother
and the loud music of
her laughter as
she ladled
soup over
steamed noodles

limp
in a round-handled
bowl

a river

over stringed beef
and

bright orange carrots
sopped in
cow fat

and i think of how she loved color

splashed about
every corner

dashes of yellow

speckled reds

and of her own flower beds
plumped with sun
tweaked and pruned while hands could still
fold enough to tame them

and later when her body failed

and black eyed susan spread
beyond clothesline poles
in through the steeples of white wired fence

how she still admired
from her kitchen window

the smiling nods of their black faces

and how she fretted

until one day
ceased fretting

and in a distant
memory i remember

trillium
white-clumping
a spring shore

and my own two hands gathering
straight stems for a small glass vase

i remember too, a
drift of language

grown in the cracks between truth and peace

and inside that particular memory

a log floated
the length of a creek

until hard caught in a dam

my breath caught there too,
at the peak of
a hill

at the top
of a drop

in the span
of a home
no longer
my own
















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