A Home of Her Own

I left the evening chores and went to the door and spoke
welcomed them to the neighborhood, said I was their
neighbor they looked like folk who were weary to settle down      
after, as their hands showed, a tenant’s life of labor.

I didn’t know that she was sick, not until she died.         
She was one of the brave kind, the first day she spent
planting red geraniums out in her piece of yard            
said she moved them with her everywhere they went.

Now at last she has a home all to herself,     
let the wind blow softly, softly over the grass         
whispering to the larkspur, rough among the roses,      
lifting red geraniums to all you who pass.

You can say this about her and it is the truth:              
she worked hard at living—it was easy to die—            
to earn a place for her to rest, as we all hope to do,         
with her face turned up to the sky.