Summer

Wendy Morton

I'm in the back garden,
dead-heading fuchsias
at summer's end.
Around me are poppies
and the perfume of stargazer lilies.

I'm thinking of how this summer
of death has so quickly passed.
My friend's father,
dead suddenly at his desk.

Another friend's mother
with cancer of the pancreas,
stopped eating, died with grace.

My mother. And her slow dying.
Her mind gone,
she sleeps all day.
Imagines, when awake,
she's on a cruise ship.
Music and dancing
under the stars.
Stargazer lilies everywhere.
Perhaps she could waltz. Not this summer.
Not this.
Summer.

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Wendy Morton's works copyright © to the author.