Whispers

This beautiful poem came out of my heart all in one sitting during a writing group the summer following mom’s passing. Cardinals were always her birds. Shortly after she passed in January of 2015 I found five full couples of cardinals gathered round my birdfeeder out back. What could be a more poignant message from mom than sending a pair for each – my grandmother and her four daughters – who all made the Alzheimer’s Journey…

Mom – I missed you in the lilies this summer

The wind slipped through the holes in the pines

whispering secrets and memories

brushing back and forth in time to some unknown beat

Never wilting in the heat of lust or day or, whatever may come.

Or not knowing what it was that made time tick away its lot

surrounded by some warm, moist spot lost among the sun-dappled

sprigs of birdsongs

I keep looking for you here and there

the bright flash of a wing seen on a prayer

or at least, I thought I saw you there…

Keeping to your own tune, your own time, your own rhyme

Unknown to me now, and even then,

the beating of your heart, the pulse of each thought

the way you looked in a moment caught unaware

One where you lost your care and the sun came out to play and you danced –

when you thought no one was looking.

I miss you here.

That spirit sprite hiding in the woods, playing in the grass, laughing at the past.

The hissing whisper of something not quite caught.

Somewhere in those unruptured shadows all the colors flair

and you are there

but I can’t quite see

You’ll have to forgive me as I pass you by

blind to the joy of your being there, in the twilight of each dawn

cooing gently as I am gone.

Dancing in the shadow’s song, using the play of light to lead me along.

I know you are but touching in to see how I’m doing, and gone again

I only hear the whisper of my longing

I cannot hold you here, even in memory. Only delight in the evening breeze,

the kiss of sunlight, the hum of bees.

Soft petals’ embrace and cool earth’s staunch place hold me now;

where once a  mother’s hand reached out, a thousand touches gently shout their joy around me

Telling me what I knew was always true

love’s hands are many, even though we have few senses to perceive them,

Believe them.

She whispers in my ear

The dawning light to hear as she paints my dreams with tears

Believe them

Somewhere in my spider webbed brain she flits between the flashes of my thoughts

evaporating like the dew that waters each before it is gone, leaving gentle sustenance with the dawn.

Believe them, she says

And moves on