Gosling
There was rain overnight; damp leaves,
lace eaten by insects, stick to paperbark trees
slenderly bowing over a riverbank,
where small goslings swim past her in a row.
She is stepping toward the leaning cemetery,
over a rusty iron fence falling on cracked earth.
Parting bracken with her hand, picking a firework flower
with gentle fingers, she offers it's seeds to the wind.
A butterfly glance wings her pastel patterns,
diamonds in sunlight mingle over a grave she is near.
She kneels, leaves her flowers here; warm wilting stems of iris ,
wood anemone, mugwort, bell-grass, buds of living
dreams for a young grand-mother's blessing.
Only as she was leaving, she felt a touch
to her shoulder, a soft drop on her cheeks, a whisper in her ear,
tingling her breath all the way to her fingers
curling tightly around an old cotton reel in her pocket,
as she picked and darned her way back home.
Karenjoan 1985 & 2020
There was rain overnight; damp leaves,
lace eaten by insects, stick to paperbark trees
slenderly bowing over a riverbank,
where small goslings swim past her in a row.
She is stepping toward the leaning cemetery,
over a rusty iron fence falling on cracked earth.
Parting bracken with her hand, picking a firework flower
with gentle fingers, she offers it's seeds to the wind.
A butterfly glance wings her pastel patterns,
diamonds in sunlight mingle over a grave she is near.
She kneels, leaves her flowers here; warm wilting stems of iris ,
wood anemone, mugwort, bell-grass, buds of living
dreams for a young grand-mother's blessing.
Only as she was leaving, she felt a touch
to her shoulder, a soft drop on her cheeks, a whisper in her ear,
tingling her breath all the way to her fingers
curling tightly around an old cotton reel in her pocket,
as she picked and darned her way back home.
Karenjoan 1985 & 2020