Elegy for an Absent Sister

Ephemeral as a dream wildflowers braided in wisps of hair like tenderness and jealousy, intertwining queen anne’s lace capricious chicory, aster fickle and forlorn, their petals go limp and wither My soul a solemn barn in vast meadows of switchgrass and thistle swooping swallows and solitude cat’s cradle, lavender’s blue dilly dilly I play alone at the forest fringes in the ripe dusk with my companion, imagined Dew-laden Saturday mornings slanted sunlight, regretful lilacs lament in syrupy perfume, first communions starched white dresses, hairspray and ribbons we would have fidgeted together sitting stiffly on wooden church benches amid the altar lilies and incense you make appearances in the mind’s fog lost in the timeless night wandering in shadow sometimes reproachful or mischievous a dusky presence, my almost friend Always standing on the outskirts of intimacy of the twirling circle of those spinning girls with plaited hands

remembering the few barbed words

like little daggers

crushed by a single glance

or snigger

how sweetness and cruelty

can reside like bedmates

in feminine hearts

over the decades, our hair would gray

memories would deepen our days

our children would share Christmases, Easters

you would give your love and withdraw it

there would be suffering, but

I would return to you, again and again

marriages would fade

parents would pass on

children forget to call

but the nectar of your voice

would welcome me back like a monarch to its milkweed

Like a dove

I mourn you

like the solitary clover lost in fields erupting with blossoms

I grieve the day

you were never born. (After Andre Previn’s "Vocalise")