Pinched Offerings
I read about the fire victim gift cards
with funds drained before they’re swiped,
victims victimized again
who is spending their money how?
I don’t understand it
but it galls me
now I worry that we gave Jerry
who brings our mail each day
worse than an empty envelope at Christmas –
one full of broken promises instead
but I’m not sure how to politely ask him or them
if our gift let them down
After I wrote this I found a photographer who was willing to take a picture of the weeping cherry tree, but it had already dropped its blooms. Maybe next year… Thanks to Rozanne Lee Anderson-Moreland for the photos.
weeping cherry
the most thoughtful gift
I’ve ever been given
she was a First Communion miracle
planted just for me
8 years old
our heights about matched
we grew up together
her hot pink flowers lit up the spring
and one year when she was little
robins nested in the heart of her crown
I never named her
five years later we grew apart
divorce took me to a smaller home
without a tree to call my own
but I still visited
still had a claim on that piece of earth
now, with my father gone,
the house and tree
willed to his wife,
she’s another thing I could lose any day
if I could have anything from that home place
I’d take a photo of her now
in marvellous bloom
higher than the house
also perpetual permission to trespass
to lay my bones down
on Walnut Creek shale
whenever it calls
