Reading Time: 2 minutes
EDITORS INTRODUCTION
What a fabulous Poem!  It has everything: Highly descriptive, emotive, and really well structured.  It is no wonder that Wanda's poem was selected and published in the March 2017 issue of Prism, vol. 25.  You can read more of Wanda's poetry on Allpoetry.com
MEMORIAL DAY – by Wanda Lea Brayton

 

Humid days found me with scissors in the garden,
cutting tall stems gently, helping my mother fill coffee cans
with water, then with tulips, daffodils and chrysanthemums.
We drove, then walked for hours, pausing to put one can each
upon the final beds of those whose names I did not recognize,
for relatives I knew only from fading photographs.

Evergreens and pines scented the air as ground squirrels ran furiously
to scurry from our sight, then raise from their burrows inquisitively,
wondering why we were slowly spreading color across parched dirt.

I knew to step carefully between rows and whisper with respect;
although I thought no one was listening, I could never be too sure.

Silently, my mother would wipe a tear from her sun-blushed cheek;
I would gently take her hand and hold it between my own,
unable to understand her sorrow – she’d stroke my hair,
murmur about the inevitable passage of years,
mourning shadows the dusk could not hide from her eyes.

Even now, I remember the weight of a cloudless sky
as her shoulders bent beneath the heft of unspoken memories –
then, she would sigh and say it was time to go,
leaving behind those who’d already gone ahead long before,
marking trails we could not follow.

On the way home, we were quiet, each lost in our own thoughts.

Decades later, without her hands and wisdom to guide me,
there have been far too many places to visit
and never enough flowers to cover these expanding fields.


© Wanda Lea Brayton 2023