Time and Seasons Without You

End of Daylight Savings

Another year to turn clocks back,

to gain another hour.

I didn’t think this time change

would be the year I lost you.

***

All I Need

The wind blows crisped leaves into piled winter snow. Petals burst colors through a blanket of snowfall. The birds, bees, and butterflies carry small seeds that erupt into flowers from where I know not. The flowers wilt, pressed between pages of sunlight. Sunlight fades into leaves falling, crisping. All I need is my garden to forecast the weather, unerring, dependable, showing me seasons of life passing by.

***

A Place of Shelter

Autumn leaves are frosted beauty, sheltering

brittle stalks of summer flowers.

Each leaf a promise, blown to ground,

that winter is a season only, not unending bleakness,

that spring’s warm sun will never melt away.

***

I wrote these poems after my mother died on November 1, 2023. When she went into the hospital, it was still Daylight Savings Time, and the leaves on the trees were brilliant reds and yellows. When she died three weeks later, most of the trees were naked, and whatever leaves clung to branches were crinkled brown.

published in Imogene's Notebook