My Mother’s Cancer by Kay Middleton

cold
winter days
strung together
like cheap beads
snap and spill
onto the earth
chattering hailstones
on window glass melting,
leaving circle scars
of unforgotten pain
tomorrow is gray asphalt
divided by white-lined
platitudes stretching straight
and flat between barren arms
of oak and birch on, undiluted,
to an unknown garden
devoid of fragrance,
yellow daffodils.


Kay Middleton, Virginia, USA