Tomorrow the day when florists deliver bouquets
yours absent of lilies your mother’s flower
She the determined woman who parcelled
a three pound child in brown paper & was gone
before end of your first year
Your father never bought a headstone & I often
wonder why stiff blooms have power to poison
family after pollen falls They blamed you
rather than focus on real cause or accept
just how much you were wanted
Years on I meet a woman with those same dark eyes
fierce & wild as you are. The photograph of her
in her new mother’s arms mirrors that sepia shot
Ann out on the back step sleeves rolled up like a mother
who salvages a birdcage from a charred room
& I cannot bring myself to order flowers
which eventually droop & lick silent walls
Because in your last age of breath & spit
all the gentle words I must say should be seen
not gushed as panaceas across a writer’s desk
©Natalia Spencer 2016
Cover image ©Marie Elkins 2012
This resonates xxxx
Thank you Sarah, I hope you have had a good Mother’s Day despite your loss
Thank you, yes my children have been wonderful x
God. This makes me so sad. Beautiful work, Talia.
Thanks Tony. Our mothers have the ability to give us boundless love & carry mountains as they do so.