The Light in a New Season

The upended dresser, its drawers
splayed like the legs of a shot giraffe,
lay for weeks spewing their contents, a
symbol of her life's slipped-away order.

The Western Redbud in her
father's back yard is circled beautifully
by its dropped halo of orange and yellow,
keeping on its purposeful, time-honored path.

The leaves will require raking when they
turn black brown in the coming cold, not unlike
the daughter's dresser, righted with its drawers
contents folded and pushed gently shut.