Willow Song

Untitled
I found my childhood was waiting
with the snapdragons
and fence-climbing ivy
at our Mount Laurel home,
still.
That June, it picked up the edges of its sprinkler-dampened skirts and
traipsed away, head bowed,
to sit in a pew of an unfamiliar church where
a broken hearted Child-No-Longer
donned a black dress.
I made my voice attempt a song,
sparse, forced, scratching through,
notes of Amazing Grace stabbing at the back of my throat.
Silver handles and early-summer flowers
hid thin gray fingers
thin gray skin
limp coppery hair
frozen shoulders--
In the pressing heat,
they sped him away to become dust and smoke
and left me weeping on the pavement.
A willow shrugged at me lazily from the churchyard,
the sound of the funeral bells drifting through her branches
like the chorus of an ancient lullaby,
and told me this was Living.
--
CB
Sept. 2003