It was going to be a Sunday in San Diego.
When the jacaranda blooming against whitewashed plaster
leaned purple down to be seen
When Anna’s Hummingbird buzzed the ridgelinein search of a still sweeter Cuphea
to trace the arc of a more perfect thirst
When April relieved March of disconsolate duty
and unbidden roadside sprigs of pink and yellow Ranunculus opened
so irresponsibly so naked with anticipation
that tomes of nature poems would go unwritten
When Ann, Kally, Jen, Mary collected you and crushed grapes
from Sonoma, Jamesport, Coqiumbo, Tuscany
Bordeaux, Granada, Coonawarra, & Breede River Valley
metabolized into crystalline story-sparks
to curtain unjust tests of your moment
in a synchrony of cuisine & merriment,
like Cú Chulainn tied to a standing stone
anointed by a small counterforce of nature --
that eddying of how and when you were loved.
When instead
we are somehow to resist the weight
of every other day without you.
for Barbara
2 April 2015