FLORA

Today would have been my sister's eighty-first birthday. Readers may recall that she died last May, quite suddenly, just a couple of weeks after she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. I celebrate her life today, and the love for each other that it took so long to find... I have a few thoughts and memories of her today.


GINGER

She stands
at the kitchen counter,
calm, slightly stooped
by her eighty years of life,
intent on the task
at hand, chopping ginger
into tiny fragments
for the porridge.

"Oh, good morning,"
she says, brightly,
with that sweet, sharp
edge of politeness
that we learned as children
in the rectory. "I think,"
she says, "it's going
to be a lovely day."


HER POTS

Delicate
at the rim, and sturdy
at the base, they
run with color. White
is the foundation;
then come
the glazes, sparkling,
in lava flows,
pooling in places,
finding their path.


WHITE LIONS

I have the feeling
that her spirit fled
on her death, to join
the white lions
in Africa, that she
loved--a dying
species, graceful,
pure, their own
wild spirit tamed
by a kind of inner
discipline, a confidence
that power is there
when needed.
I see her roaming
the plains with them,
joyfully, at peace.


GOGGY

She kept a room
for her grandson
in her house.
He called her Goggy
from his youngest
days. I know
that she adored
the child in him;
later, the growing
man he'd come
to be, not quite,
before she died.
She gave him
more generously
of herself than
any other living
being, opening
her heart in ways
she could find
hard with others,
holding, always,
some part back;
call it "reserve,"
a place she kept
with determination
for herself.