“Resurrection Fern”

I settle back for some good finger-pickin’ guitar,
a gentle beat in the background. Is this
old-time steel pedal guitar Jim loved so much?
Already I am slipping down a memory lane
I have neither visited nor recall.

We will live like a ghost will live, the voice croons
in dulcet tones, the beat compelling,
the words unclear; until I hear
the fallen house across the way will keep
everything … the baby’s breath, our bravery…

and suddenly the lane is ours, the fallen down house
the one grandson Paul routinely mentions
ever since Jim and I took him, last summer,
on a house tour of the tumbling-down old,
the renovated and the obscenely huge modern.

Yes, our house, though not falling down,
will indeed keep the baby’s breath –
those raised, those visiting, and if I am lucky
that planted in the garden – to remind me
of our bravery. But it is the oak tree

that captures me most, the feature of our yard
now shading La Casita to house family
and friends come to celebrate Jim’s life, his
foresight in claiming this land for the lives of us all,
and especially the resurrection of spirit and tree

through his patient pruning and the gifts of time.
If his ghost wants to live with me there, so be it.
I shall welcome the company, and with my own
stubborn green eyes that see everything,
re-magine us as a pair of underwater pearls.

sarahw