Roses, Song and Apricots
Within pages of Mom’s hymn book, pink leaves,
once crimson, flake beneath my fingers, picked up
from walks with Mom four decades ago, my small hand
in her large one. Together we treasured colors at our feet.
Her cursive loops brown-edged pages of her hymnal,
ragged edges splayed now on my piano,
“Play for me.”
What a Friend We Have in Jesus--
I caress the notes for her.
Her small ceramic pot does duty these days
at my house for carrying indoor water out.
Its pink daisies sing my childhood chant
“she loves me, she loves me not”--
my complaint of her as I grew up.
Sweet cherry cola—once our Friday treat
at Franklin’s Five and Dime--
I discovered in the café of her redwood haven
the week after her breaths ceased,
old-time, coloring red an hour-glass bottle.
Cleaning bird-pecked, half-rotted
apricots in my sink recalls the tedium, her many
orders, slaving at her sink, bitter for
my no’s to friends, car and beach.
Decades later I tweeze resentments.
Once I couldn’t stand her Baptist hymnody,
her red roses or clumpy, orange jam.
Yet I fill jars with sweet, cooked apricots,
and feed blooms of her “Peace” roses.
She doesn’t leave. Today her watering
pot breaks and I gather sweet shards.
Twelve months since we buried her, yet
grief returns to unbalance and bewilder.
Buds
Twiggy hands reach up, implore the heavens.
Ten or twelve little knuckles nose up one branch.
Multiply by a dozen—there, you see it,
this winter-naked, knobby tree.
I pause, stare and marvel: at each twig’s
end something tight and tiny grows,
all closed, but one—it opens just a little,
a pink promise of life and future for you and me.
If we all lift and open knobby hands to beg
and thank the Maker of our common trunk,
what beauty will bud? From insect-burrowed
bark and wood long-asleep, flowers emerge,
profuse. We'll blossom too, bear fruit—tart
or sweet—with copious seeds to scatter, spreading
spring. Our common need and pleas birth
sprouts, in midst of ashen ground.
Carol Park’s homes range from San Francisco’s suburbs and redwood wilderness to Japan’s cultural mazes. Teaching and befriending English learners, she’s learned how precious is the meeting of minds over tea. Her MFA came from Seattle Pacific University. Her poetry appears in SLANT, Minerva Rising, Black Fox, Hearts of Flesh, and the anthology, Viral Verse: Poetry of the Pandemic, and the upcoming, Love in the Time of COVID and MiGoZine. Read her fiction at carolpark.us.
Within pages of Mom’s hymn book, pink leaves,
once crimson, flake beneath my fingers, picked up
from walks with Mom four decades ago, my small hand
in her large one. Together we treasured colors at our feet.
Her cursive loops brown-edged pages of her hymnal,
ragged edges splayed now on my piano,
“Play for me.”
What a Friend We Have in Jesus--
I caress the notes for her.
Her small ceramic pot does duty these days
at my house for carrying indoor water out.
Its pink daisies sing my childhood chant
“she loves me, she loves me not”--
my complaint of her as I grew up.
Sweet cherry cola—once our Friday treat
at Franklin’s Five and Dime--
I discovered in the café of her redwood haven
the week after her breaths ceased,
old-time, coloring red an hour-glass bottle.
Cleaning bird-pecked, half-rotted
apricots in my sink recalls the tedium, her many
orders, slaving at her sink, bitter for
my no’s to friends, car and beach.
Decades later I tweeze resentments.
Once I couldn’t stand her Baptist hymnody,
her red roses or clumpy, orange jam.
Yet I fill jars with sweet, cooked apricots,
and feed blooms of her “Peace” roses.
She doesn’t leave. Today her watering
pot breaks and I gather sweet shards.
Twelve months since we buried her, yet
grief returns to unbalance and bewilder.
Buds
Twiggy hands reach up, implore the heavens.
Ten or twelve little knuckles nose up one branch.
Multiply by a dozen—there, you see it,
this winter-naked, knobby tree.
I pause, stare and marvel: at each twig’s
end something tight and tiny grows,
all closed, but one—it opens just a little,
a pink promise of life and future for you and me.
If we all lift and open knobby hands to beg
and thank the Maker of our common trunk,
what beauty will bud? From insect-burrowed
bark and wood long-asleep, flowers emerge,
profuse. We'll blossom too, bear fruit—tart
or sweet—with copious seeds to scatter, spreading
spring. Our common need and pleas birth
sprouts, in midst of ashen ground.
Carol Park’s homes range from San Francisco’s suburbs and redwood wilderness to Japan’s cultural mazes. Teaching and befriending English learners, she’s learned how precious is the meeting of minds over tea. Her MFA came from Seattle Pacific University. Her poetry appears in SLANT, Minerva Rising, Black Fox, Hearts of Flesh, and the anthology, Viral Verse: Poetry of the Pandemic, and the upcoming, Love in the Time of COVID and MiGoZine. Read her fiction at carolpark.us.