there were roses in her garden...
pale pink roses as full and heavy as
heads of cabbage in july...
she would walk the length of its
cobbled path with a secret smile
that held memories, and promises,
and dreams that all came true....
it was as if these roses were messengers
from a place where he had gone, and
she would one day follow...
as her open hand graced the head of
each bloom with the tenderness of a
mother's hand on her infant's cheek,
her wedding rings, now loose upon her
slender fingers...gave off a sound that
reminded us of distant sleigh bells from
a time when she was a girl and horses
stood tethered to hitching posts beyond the
garden gate...
she is remembering...the scent of
cabbage roses, summer evenings full
of lace, fireflies on the lawn,
and the sound of his voice asking
her to dance....
she weaves through the bramble of summer and
tangled vines of sweet smellling honeysuckle
fifty years of color isolation leaps into action...she
can spot the sugar-dusted dark purple of a blueberry
from the distance of a stones throw across the pond...
the sun-warmed smoothness of their taut skin,
with its tiny tuft at one end, takes her back to
girlhood days spent in this Maine cove where summer
afternoons stretched languidly like colorful beachtowels
along a clothesline of cotton rope tied between a pair of
birch trees outside her grandparents cottage...
plucking one after another she can almost feel the
lard and flour between her fingers while her mother's
voice echoes a reminder that only the coldest water
sprinkled in..only as needed... would make a pie crust flaky
enough to honor this most beloved fruit of summer
holding a single berry, fingers stained with juice the
color of a midnight sky, her hands are the hands of
a girl again...as taut and full of promise as the first
blueberries of summer...
a table waits...two chairs, an old pitcher filled
with daisies and the kettle boiling while scones
bake and robins feather their nests in the
apple tree by the back gate...
she will arrive in the cloud of summer dust that
rises from the long drive leading to the farmhouse
where her memories of childhood stand sentry
like the talk stalks of sweet corn that line the
gravel lane...
she will know she is home by the slap of the
screen door, the whirr of a table fan, the feel
of warped porch steps beneath her bare feet,
the scent of her mother's perfume...her father's
voice as he rounds the barn to greet her...arms
open wide...
her mother will wait just inside the frame of
the back door...her tears too private and her
feelings too new...this daughter is not a little
girl who will rush into her arms...she trembles
with joy, and something un-named....a shyness in
the dawn of this new relationship...
that is until the woman-child crosses the lawn
and buries her tear-stained face in her mother's
hair and for a moment...they are, still...
where are you looking from where you
stand with the sun on your flanks and
the fingers of your beloved woven through
your mane...
is there a place beyond the horizon that
calls to you, or do you just love the way
the pasture dips and rises to meet the sky
what is in the wind...
is there a scent inviting you to dance
along a distant ridge, to prance and leap,
to forge streams and soar over fallen
lodgepole pines scattered below an
avalanche chute
is there a girl with flazen hair that
urges you to fly...and remember days of
meadows filled with wildflowers...
what do you see beyond....
