Eunice Marguerite

Today is a personal Holy Day.
It is the anniversary of my mother's death.
Every year on this date I plant a rose bush in her honor.
This will be number 19.

I acquired my love of gardening from my mother.
That and reading.
My sister and I both wish
we had kept the paper lunch bags she personalized
with elaborate stick figure drawn stories.
She said she did it so we would know which were ours.
Mom made great lunches with lots of goodies for us to trade.

Daisies were her favorite flowers.
"Clair de Lune" her favorite piece of music
and Joyce Kilmer's sentiments.
"I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as tree..."

Mom: thank you for the mark you left
xoxoxo
this is for you

Redwood Reverie

Afternoon shadow beckons
you enter into ferned glade,
enfolded in leafy stillness.
In silence, anxiety's edges
spill onto forest carpet.
Within these old groves:
mother, maiden, crone
move outside time, beyond trine.
Worn cares of workaday world
find no welcome here
in your soul's realm;
of Nature unveiling
her hidden rhythms.

Decay feeds growth.
Growth strengthens limb.
Limb reaches crown high
to descend again
through renewal's seasons.

July 2004