Remembering
She lay on the sofa,
Two arthritis pain pills nearby,
Holding a thin romance book
With a thin plot involving
An empty heroine, an empty hero,
Explicitly but tastefully making love.
I’ve heard, she said, closing the book,
Marking her place with a folded handkerchief,
That books with graphic sex
Can be awfully boring.
What are those tall trees across the street?
Georgia pines, we told her.
She asked: Is the tallest one the father,
And the other two son and daughter?
We laughed. All siblings, we replied.
She looked doubtful. Then she said:
I’m convinced trees talk, I wish I knew what about.
Since I'm eighty now, I suppose
I'll never understand tree language.
I also think each tree has a soul,
The way people do -- don’t you?
What’s the glossy dark green tree on the left?
A magnolia, we said, almost an evergreen.
Remember magnolias from Maryland?
Smaller ones -- we called them sweet bays.
Yes, she said, and smiled. Beautiful small magnolias
With creamy blossoms, up on the hill.
There’s a weeping willow, she went on,
A happy bouncy willow.
Look how gracefully it bends in the breeze!
March had a cruel surprise:
Four inches of icy snow, bitter winds..
The willow perished.
Later a bush appeared in its place,
But we kept on picturing the willow.
Next they replaced the grove of pines
With a tire shop.
A year later, the magnolia was felled,
And the house behind it, too.
Six condos were quickly built,
And marketed for a million dollars each.
Still, we'd see when looking across the street,
Superimposed on the replacements,
The willow, the magnolia, the pines.
Lovely tree ghosts: They had greeted us kindly.
By then our mother wasn't on the sofa or reading.
She was bedridden, and couldn’t focus on books.
Despite her dying heart, we all three
Changed our residence -- an enforced move.
We hope the tree ghosts are still intact and active,
We'll always think of them with affection,
But my sister and I don't plan to visit that block again.
Our mother is not alive any more, either,
But we doubt she’s a ghost, like the trees.
We consider that she is
Bound up forever in the bonds of eternal life.
All the same, at times we’ll be overcome
By a wave of goodness and warmth,
Amazing beauty and strength,
Incredible devotion.
Then, puzzled, we'll discuss what happened,
And the only sane conclusion we can reach
Is that Mama had paid us a fleeting loving visit.
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