To Maggie When Grandpa is Gone

Make it April when you and your mumma 
come back to explore her childhood home 
searching for solace when Grandpa is gone. 

Enjoy the glory of Georgia in spring 

as you poke around the garden paths 

but don’t look for my ghost in the roses 

or the showy whites of viburnum. 

I’m not in a swath of azaleas 

or a perfect row of tulips. 

But rise before the sun first lights 

the clouds behind the crest of trees 

that shadow our stretch of Oconee. 

Bundle yourself and set a brisk pace 

through the chilly end of an April night 

immersed in the chorus of morning. 

The gates of my heaven are guarded 

by a sentinel brown thrasher 

belting a medley of bird-psalms 

from the tip of a tender-leafed tree. 

We’ll meet in the moments the new world glows 

with clean glimmers of predawn light. 

And I will sing my peace to you 

in the whistling trill of a waterthrush song 

and the sweet of a chickadee call. 

You’ll bound like the yearling trailing a doe,  

you and your mumma, but girl when you go 

I’ll be the still spring in your soul.