Your Cement Garden

mirrored before me stands a woman hair of red
color from childhood caused much pain and dread
and in his legal way and cold heart
my father said, “Girl, thank God your smart.”
and in the short time words take
he dropped a child’s crystal heart to floor in break
with my mother dead, the job and me were too much task
so questions of childhood were left unasked
it has taken me many years
to wash away my fathers words in tears
twenty years he has been dead now
and I wish he could see me somehow
for his ugly duckling has become a swan
and a glued heart has gone far beyond
I hated him then but not anymore
adulthood taught me to forgive and understand him more

yet, it’s sad to me, we’ll never know the sweetness meant
as I visit you in your garden of cement



pictures from family cemetery in Mississippi

"...the rest is silence" (Hamlet)  Shakespeare

" I walked beside the evening sea And dreamed a dream that could not be" George William Curtis"

Kay