Flowers for a wedding.
Low autumn sunlight shafted
through the doorway
into the dusty time-shadows of old
stone,
set rims of gold on puddled tiles.
Her hands were not quite steady,
her tears too near the surface:
“It’s too full, this arrangement,
too full...”
as her shaking mind disposed the
mix of leaves -
some cool, slim, aspiring, very
English,
spearing historied air with muted
green;
but others broad, defiant, flayed
by a ragged autumn,
by cold, flat winds,
daubed with blood and printed with
privation;
among them lay the quiet presences
of pale chrysanthemums, all
patient in their paper-white,
in mothering pink and rose - they
smelt of closeness, warmth,
and yet were spiced with winter.
Flowers for a wedding;
nothing to do with her
but the tears ran over her
happiness:
“My brother, they’ve found my
brother...”,
and their mother’s heart tricked
by joy
at the end of waiting years -
six when they found him gone, the
child,
a half a century ago.
Too much, too full, too
overflowing.
The hands gathered, settling here
and there like birds,
caressed and gentled,
adding prayer to prayer,
as her singing mind took over the
arrangement.
Flowers for a wedding:
everyone remarked on them.
(November,
1989)
