Lucinda Leaving The Garden

[with love to my grandmother, Lucy Jane...]

I've got some things to sing to the flowers
she said, before leaving
when they are shaken from the boughs

and lay along lost roads somehow
in  bitter moonlight gilded.
but the flowers won't heed me easily

having to wait on the winds to descend
and was this why God sent me here
to sing things to the flowers

year by year I've wondered through the
dimming tears;

sometimes it feels that way
and I sing the peach flower songs
and speak to the plum flower

the stars are turning to orchid.
if only there was another year
filled to the rim with song

i would dress in gauze or in lawn
and whisper pale blue stanzas
in the garden

and disregard encroachments on the heart,
that unguarded country.

mary angela douglas 5 march 2018