My Mother's Garden - 1984

For my mother, who was sometimes difficult: written eight years after her passing.

I recall her white roses blooming along the backyard fence,
filled with bees buzzing away the Tennessee afternoons.
I remember being first up in the morning, I thought -
discovering Mom down on her knees in the red clay
tending her Easter lilies.
My mother, manna of the flowerbed.
How often I must have turned her proffered wine to blood!
Oh, she poked and weeded mercilessly around my loudly protesting roots
and yet I know now, I'm sure of it:
her will was all for me to bloom.
What is mercy if not the pruning of the vines in early spring,
the opening of the womb to birth?
Sweet breath of the tiny sleeping baby,
slanting dance of sunlight through a bottle of homemade wine:
they move us through labor and pain
into the heart of love.
How rich the garden where the living kneel,
weeding out their petty judgements of the dead.
The oriole sings there, and at night
lovers ply its flowering stars for dreams
like bees among the roses.