To Mary Margaret, “nothing but fine rain” (reflection on an ‘angel’s passing’)
It must be the constant grey sky, the moist air, the tearful silence of still leaves, and the passing away of a niece, Mary Margaret, at 29 years old, invalid most of her growing up years from an undetected source of her seizures–an angel to us all–that midly paralyzed me with a meltdown. Being old, I saw through my life as in a screen: what did really matter and what matters most. I believe she had the perfect answer with her illness having shorn her of the false sun sparks that I could be guilty of racing to catch. The weeks following her death lead me to an overdue clarity of the truths I failed to recognize, hence, left untended. I hope that with my thinning bones, I could still carry a metaphorical watering can to bring them back to life. Would that these three haiku were enough for now…
fall twilight
on her grave nothing
but fine rain
***
on her tomb
tiny hands sweep
leavings of sparrows
***
candle drippings
on her epitaph-
a broken word
summaries (a sequence)
earth’s raiment showing
legs
if coquetry
a verb dandelion fur
thigh-high mist the graveyard sea wind-lisps
vexed with what to wed
air
brain murmur definitely scarred
denied
the monkey tree’s appeals
page 10
in a hyena’s lock jaw all the why’s
page 11
shattered ear possibly the gist of all paralysis
page 12
bones #18 November 15, 2019 (a journal of contemporary haiku)