Then I Returned to the House of the Slow Letting Go

I went out into the evening,
walked alone with my clippers
to dead-head the marigolds
the peonies, no longer spinning planets,
and the now brown-leafed rhododendrons.
I picked up my watering can to slake a thirsty fern,
pulled yellow aromatic leaves off the pink geraniums,
surprised a brown thrasher in the grass,
bent to weed a circle of flowers.

The house stood filled with the presence
Of the dying man. It was his garden
he’d brought back from wildness, tended
with the dry warmth of his hands.

I lifted my eyes to the two green ash trees,
One male, one female, swaying
towards each other over the house,
boughs still ripe with the lowering sun.

Irene Wellman came to the USA from England at the age of 15 and has written poetry most of her life. She loves the area surrounding Charlottesville and has been deeply inspired by her fellow poets here who have supported her all the way through good and bad times. She is putting together a chapbook of poems written about her husband’s recent passing.