Memorial

My mother makes an altar

to her parents

on the antique dresser

and counts the days passed

by the flowers that bud,

and wilt, and shed tear-shaped

onto the brown wood.

She replaces them weekly:

irises, roses from her

mother’s abandoned

garden, daffodils I send

from across the country.

 

On the phone, my mother

recounts a recurrent dream.

From a small boat

in a still-bottomed creek,

she dives clear down

to the mossy basin in pursuit

of lost treasures – shiny,

cherished things –

which keep slipping

and dropping away

from her grasp. She wants

an interpreter, she wants

a firmer grip, better hands,

she wants a companion

to watch from the shore.

 

I send more daffodils,

a card, a flight confirmation

for a trip home. It is agony,

my oar-less mother, this

dizzying loss, the stagnant

house down the street.

 

In Ohio, I write their names

on a prayer list, I frame

their picture, I whisper to them

like saints.

 

By the time I arrive home,

my mother is planning

a service and scattering

their ashes on the beach

with sage.

 

We sit together at the dresser,

burning candles, collecting petals,

watching flowers die.