I think this year I’ll wait for the white lilacs
before I get too sad.
I’ll let the daffodils go, flower by flower,

On the first day of viburnum
I followed a school bus for five miles
past the magnolias and the copper lions

This is how I saved one animal’s life,
I raised the lid of the stove and lifted the hook
that delicately held the cheese—I think it was bacon—

I could live like that,
putting my chair by the window,
making my tea,

A bunch of old snakeheads down by the pond
carrying on the swan tradition, hissing
inside their white bodies, raising and lowering their heads

Inside the picture it is 1903-late spring or early summer.
The three women sit on the front porch steps,
a potted fern to their right on the middle stair,

I lay forever, didn’t I, behind those old windows,
listening to Bach and resurrecting my life.
I slept sometimes for thirty or forty minutes

What life
after the photograph
of the granddaughters

goodbye to the sun 
my father 
who blessed me 

At the age of three
I was promised in marriage
to a neighboring princess