~BARBARA CROOKER~

LEMONS

---

 
 
A yellow sun splashed lavish light
on the garden, a bright bloom
of a morning, full of possibility.
I was away from home, teaching,
when one of the poems peeled
away the thin rind of memory,
and there I was, back
in the maternity ward
when my firstborn died.

I remember how white and cold
the room was, even though
my friends brought flowers,
irises, roses.  I was hollow,
a fruit that'd been pulped
for juice, leaving nothing
but a shell, no flesh, no seeds.

Thirty years later, my daughter's
globed stomach, and then, there
was Daniel, shining and puckered
in the moony glow of the delivery
room, rinsed with light from another
world, and a new day dawning.




 
© by Barbara Crooker