I wander through the winter
graveyard that was once
my grandmother's garden:
bursting fires of fleshy ripeness
now cinders of tomatoes,
arched greens, lovers hands
unfolded to a carmine sun --
silenced into brittle ripped
roots, trampled.

I sketched her, once,
when I was fourteen, under a grapevine
heady with sweetness,
the bees circling her hands,
circling her head. She and my mother
were still speaking, then.
Years later, only I was left to note
their sadness, their similar faces,
stretched like cobwebs carrying
the weight of the sky.

Spring saturates roots
too frail to bear another season.
How do these seeds, so small, slowly
crawl from the still, dark
depths of their winter comfort,
travel through layers of vines fallen,
of rosemary-leaf calendars
and thyme graves, their origins
decomposing under the very arms
with which they reach for air?