by Carol Barrett

two years. Too painful, you said, firstborn

among the six of us. The sunny afternoon

we gathered to place Mom’s ashes beneath

rhododendrons Dad had grown, transplanted

now to our brother’s hill overlooking

the valley crowned by St. Helen’s, mist

confined to a white path along the Columbia

far below – which word is hard to bear?

Or does the pain endure because Dad was waiting,

his ashes already nourishing those lush rhodies,

his bones finally ready for hers? Tears help wash

away the wound of absence, memory carrying us

deep in these woods to Beaver Dam, to the young

alders you and I felled to help Dad clear the land,

house going up, cedar boards nailed into closets.

I know not what cushion two years give you,

there in her crossing over, and in his.

I departed too soon, my goodbyes spoken

at church, yours murmured as you slipped

drops of morphine under her tongue.

Two years may bring other reasons to make

our way down a woodsy slope, lift our eyes

to the heavens, the air damp with recent rain,

receiving such gifts we are given, poems —

magenta blooms from another time.

Carol Barrett has published three volumes of poetry, most recently READING WIND, and one of creative nonfiction. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, she has lived in nine states and in England. Carol's poems appear in JAMA, The Women's Review of Books, Nimrod, Poetry International, and in over sixty anthologies.