MOON FLOWERS

Balanced on the willowy branch
between girl and woman,
I boxed away that night with my grandmother,
two cane-seated rockers on the summer porch,
a giant tortoise in her hands.
“He enters this world old,” she whispered.

After my grandfather died, she wallpapered
the mirrors in her house.
Above the bathroom sink, two small mountains
of California Poppies hung.
Each night, as I brushed my teeth,
they waved their orange and yellow heads,
uncertain as I was, in their newness.
She fastened angel Trumpets and fairybells
inside the twin mahogany ovals on her dresser.

And atop the mirrored tiles
Grandfather had hung to expand
the dining room, she pressed
an endless field of alpine Forget-Me-Nots,
matched and smoothed their sapphire petals
with her long brush like a young girl's hair.

As the weight of age fell
upon her, whitened her eyes
like the night blooming cereus,
she awakened my silent nature.

And she knew someday I’d cross over,
unpack that night and remember
her, the tortoise and the moon,
how it hung, pasted and separate,
on the black sky like a mirror,
silver, and full.