Wild Rose

Three years are gone now, memories still bright

Of your jokes and your poems and stories

The laughter in your eyes,

Your generosity and pure love and your peace

Three years have passed since I saw your smile

Or heard your gentle voice say hello

Or watched you wave goodbye.

And my mind knows you’re gone

I feel it in your empty house

But my heart can’t seem to let go.

I wish we’d had more time

I remember you like I’m still a child

Sitting on the couch and listening

And I miss the phone calls and the letters

And slow Scrabble games at the table

And those blue bonnet eyes, glistening

To me you were always like a wild rose

A beauty that struggled and grew in the wiles and the wind

Of Montana wheat

The thorns did not hurt you, but held you up

And with your faith you did not wither

You were my grandma but also my friend

Shining bright in the prairie sun

And this is the way I’ll always remember you

Sitting there at the kitchen table, coffee in hand

Taking  a moment to sit with me

Telling stories from your childhood, about life on the homestead

Your wrinkled hands holding postcards and pictures

Or your fingers clacking away on the keyboard in the den

And how you always invited me in

To your kitchen of  that patchwork palace in the prairie

Where you worked and wrote and welcomed

I remember Grandma Dorothy, red hair blowing in the wind