Old Ladies

posted Feb 3, 2009

We hate the gardenias
Pray we can escape
Monograms, magpies

Our eggs are cold
Cleft, left undone
Our woolly minds

Opal, agate, hymns
The wafer cookies!
We are going

To the roots
Auld Lang Syne
Wondrous, well-ended

Bring on one more
Yes, bring on
With its gardens

in the garden
the scaffolding of our lives
pie à la mode, the settling

we aren’t arresting anymore
we have a faceful of bags
hamper us

pears, jam, etcetera
The canned goods!
with Godspeed

of the Alder tree
this is but a half life
the world is forgotten

wild spring
one more wild spring
and blasted gardenias

Dana Guthrie Martin lives in the Seattle area and writes wherever writing will have her. She shares her home with her husband, her pet hamster and her robot, Feldman. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review, Blossombones, Boxcar Poetry Review, Fence and Qarrtsiluni. Most of the time, she and poetry hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line.