leafing through
black and whites of her father
on the waterfront
the longing of a little girl
in mama's blue eyes


This poem was written last spring, but it stings the same as all my spring poems, with the loss of my grandparents. Funny, you would think the fall would do this, but it's the spring that most connects me to my grandparents, maybe because my memories of them are mostly connected to the outdoors, their yard, the spring and things coming to life; Grampa's vegetable garden and Nana's flower gardens.

I lost them both when I was still a teenager and my memories are good ones. But, as my mother shared with me these photos of my grandfather, then a young, dark handsome man, working on the waterfront where he shipped large blocks of granite that were quarried here in Rockport to places as far away as New York City, I realized that my mother had her own memories of her parents that went back further than any of mine. That's when I saw the little girl in her eyes--a little girl missing her daddy.

She says she thinks of her parents more often these days; I suppose she misses them more than ever and that she is hoping she will meet up with them in the end, having now outlived them both in years. I find I am more and more every day preparing for the loss of my own parents even as I am enjoying their company, a few minutes here, a few minutes there, in between work and walking the dog and writing these little poems. So I listen and I laugh and I look at old photos with them, and I try to just be glad for these days, not sad.