The roses stand in the chill of early spring
leggy and bare, thorns exposed,
memories of summer's blossoms swelled
into red and golden hips: hard, round, and full.
The frost-withered tomato vine
lies dreaming of harvests past, and to come,
the smell of ripening fruit rising warm and acrid
from the heat of summer noons.
Now stilled, the work of hands
that brought these harvests forth,
brought forth the warm bread, steaming, on a winter night,
crafted the solid heft of a quilt
to be laid down upon the sleeping child,
brought forth the children themselves, sowing their seed,
their children, upon the earth --
the work is not diminished
because the hands have come to rest.
In each seed sown is the memory of its beginning
that grants the promise of what it will become.
The rain, passing down hills planted
with gardens dormant in March's yellow light,
runs to the sea, and carries the sound of bees
singing in remembered spring buds
into the crashing of salt waves
upon a sandy shore.
Stand at that shore, and bid farewell
and welcome to the life come round,
the keening cry of gulls rejoicing
at the full circle of our days.
March, 2000
in memory of Barbara Jean Peterson Heninger,
Dec. 2, 1923 - Mar. 11, 2000