In the evening
I walked by the garden
the old couple had tilled
on the corner of Jordan
and Highview
and wept.
Would that the garden
we had made
had been like that one.
It feels too late to start
growing. The soil
is clay and tears
the only water.
There's been much talk
about how parents ought
to bless their children;
I never dreamed
how much I'd need
my children
to bless me.
The children are old enough
to get married themselves now
and, post-covid,
banished to---not from
--the gardens
Here, when I look out at them
through my kitchen window
supple-skinned,
splayed out on the lawn
moving their day
from church to tent
and back again,
I'm in turns hopeful
and ashamed
and proud
their garden will be much richer
and more fragrant than mine.
They are tending it
so well, down to the very
ordering of their seeds.
Plans have been changing
these days--
But the weddings still go on
More people or less.
More space or less.
More risk or less.
The love,
it goes on, too,
more or ...
more.
* * *
When night falls, the fireflies
with their defiant blinking
the improbable fireflies
find their glow mates
in the garden's reeds.
The Lord's blessings be upon you,
My precious, rare fireflies.
Love,
Mom
*Poem title taken from an abstract painting I own by artist Kelly Kruse.
