My wife and I are blessed to have grandchildren, a wistful experience full of reflections regarding our own children. Our pride swells when we watch them parent, part nostalgia, mostly awe. Unfortunately, my mother never lived to see us as parents.
This prose poem is entitled Grandmother.
She carries the goldenrod in a vine basket to a river of husky rocks where children climb and admire the green pool that swirls and swallows their smiles as if memories disappear in the deep cool water rushing from a recent rainstorm so she sits and prays at the river's edge atop a rock where the children admire their shadows while Grandmother casts her blessing with words full of contours and aplomb that stick to the gray rocks and weave through the trees like wind hugging dreams as she hands each child a stem of goldenrod cherish these flowers because they will heal your wild hearts so you may never be alone along the river during the summer rushing to the fall