By Geralyn Pinto
(Dedicated to my mother, Praxedes Mary Rose, 1924-1994)
You lay - a hollow
between two lengths of rosewood -
your small remains resting,
white laced and satined,
ashening up towards us;
the bright, clean colours of your youth
leaked away,
lending you the pale decency
of death in old age.
And now I sift the soil
sieve the air,
about the spot where you are laid,
trying not to think of
thieving roots of periwinkles
prying into your quietness,
turning your memories into
the rich pinks and rare purples
of graveyard flowers.
All thought of you
is rinsed in the colours of our past:
bright orange-lit afternoons
making gooseberry jam,
then cupping in our hands
proud bowls of clear and sweet amber;
grey monsoon mornings
which you turned into the teal green
of fairytale oceans lapping at my nursery window.
Here in the churchyard petals are adrift,
flaunting their pollen yellow,
hibiscus red and ballerina white;
taunting me with stolen hues,
flavours and fragrances,
turning me into a slow creeper of longing
as I go down on hands and knees
searching in the dust of ages
for some of the colour of you.
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