Handel’s Messiah
swells in my living room.
Colored globes
glisten from my tree.
Christmas blooms
like daffodils in spring,
but still emptiness
like a tumor grows.
From an old LP,
the gentle strains of The First Noel
flood my mother’s living room.
Paper hearts with m&m’s inside
hung from her tree.
The green tablecloth with a red felt bow
made with her own hand.
Rhymes she wrote
on green and red packages
when fingers were nimble
and cognition was keen.
From thousands of miles away
my persistent recollections
mingle with Handel
in an empty stillness
while a family who never knew
my mother
inhabits her house.
The bench in her name
is all that’s left,
anchored across the street
in the park
that shepherds a faded past.
First published online in Avatar Review August 2019