The Morning Reading: "the color of flowers in the dark"

Birthday Poem for My Grandmother
(for L.B.M.C., 1890-1975)

–Sharon Olds

I stood on the porch tonight– which way do we
face to talk to the dead? I thought of the
new rose, and went out over the
grey lawn– things really
have no color at night. I descended
the stone steps, as if to the place where one
speaks to the dead. The rose stood
half-uncurled, glowing white in the
black air. Later I remembered
your birthday. You would have been ninety and getting
roses from me. Are the dead there
if we do not speak to them? When I came to see you
you were always sitting quietly in the chair,
not knitting, because of the arthritis,
not reading, because of the blindness,
just sitting. I never know how you
did it or what you were thinking. Now I
sometimes sit on the porch, waiting,
trying to feel you there like the color of the
flowers in the dark.

*

(photo: My maternal grandmother, Rita Beland, (born June 16, 1910 in Marinette, Wisconsin) on her wedding day to Richard Mann (September 7, 1935).