My Mother’s Garden
Sometimes, in dreams, I wander
half remembered woods.
Sunlight casts flickering shadows of light
over the forest floor.
I am searching for the flowers;
the wild flowers and the tame flowers.
Flowers from every garden she ever grew,
blooming together in unlikely harmony.
I stoop, I pick, I fill my arms with the fat, fragrant blossoms.
Especially the blue ones.
She loved the blue ones.
I am picking this bouquet for her.
My life is a procession of flowers and memories.
A patchwork of the things she taught me
as we worked in her garden
Weeding, culling, training the vines
in the way they should go.
Training me
in the way I should go.
And I know she’s gone
but still I wander half forgotten woods,
content in the cognitive dissonance of dreams
that one day I’ll hand her that bouquet and
she’ll smile and say
“Well done.”
Linda Studley 