A Gift

 

Leaning back against the Poäng with her eyes half closed, her thin hands clasped a mug of coffee mainly for the warmth it imparted, as the coffee itself was often barely drunk.

Seeing me when she opened her eyes, my mother unexpectedly asked for a pen and a piece of paper.  As I hurriedly searched for the writing implements, I tried to remember when I last saw her use a pen, all the while fearing that she would forget her request if I did not act quickly enough.

To my relief, once she had the pen in hand along with a piece of lined paper that I quickly tore from my journal, she propped the blank sheet of paper on a new issue of Vogue magazine and started writing without pause.

She finished writing a few minutes later and looked up.  With a gleam in her eyes, she handed me the piece of paper, now scrawled with several lines of verses in French, in a handwriting I recognized.  

The verses were those she has known since childhood:

A day when I would be old

and you would be old.

Your blond hair will become whitened

Elsa, Elsa...  

A Memory

 

     

I continue to see the path, with the eyes of my seven-year-old self, despite revisiting it many decades later. Tidy without much adornment from overhanging foliage, the path traversed the length of our yard, from the forbidding metal gate to the garage, it was my fiefdom when I was still an only child.

I wandered along it, suffused with fear and exhilaration as I touched the leaves of a Venus Flytrap bordering the path, seeing the fronds avidly closing over my small hand.

Several years later, with my younger sister by my side, I shared the spoils of my fiefdom with her, watching her marvel as I deftly enjoined the carnivorous plant to reveal itself to her.

Boddhisatva

 

My old cat is an equanimous

Chinese sage

ever trusting of a warm lap

as she dozes awash

in swirls of rainbows.

April

 

Pendant drops of rain 

bejeweled the bare branches 

for one brief morning.

Drinking Peppermint Tea

 

A schmear of sun

dazzles from behind 

the neighbor’s maple 

and softens the gnarled branches.

Untitled

   

At this moment 

my cup of tea 

with its bitter note 

is as it should be.

Matcha

 

As I whisk

the fine verdant granules 

whirl and blend 

into the steaming water 

and a confluence of tiny bubbles 

erupt onto the surface 

releasing a piquant scent 

and a host of mornings past.