Poetry+Comparison

4. Summer

I'm in the back garden, dead-heading fuchsias at summer's end. Around me are poppies and the perfume of stargazer lilies. I'm thinking of how this summer of death has so quickly passed. My friend's father, dead suddenly at his desk.

Another friend's mother with cancer of the pancreas, stopped eating, died with grace. My mother. And her slow dying. Her mind gone, she sleeps all day.

Imagines, when awake, she's on a cruise ship. Music and dancing Under the stars. Stargazer lilies everywhere. Perhaps she could waltz. Not this summer. Not this. Summer.