You, a Garden

By Jannie Edwards

Noon, high summer, and you arrive in yellow—
Mother, years since you died
and only now, finally, I call you Denise, your own name
in the burning world that is mother to us both.
But how is it, Denise, you have learned
to inhabit yellow, distill the living daylights
into dandelion, into bees levitating
swaths of canola, into the song of the white-throated sparrow
DAH-DAH-dat-dada-dat  
a new rhetoric for joy, a small engine that charges the moment
a goldfinch alights in the ripening caragana, nudging us
Yes! to sing your old favorite island song
Yellow bird, up high in banana tree
Picker coming soon
Like banana too
They might pick you someday
My grown daughter, your granddaughter, now a mother too,
laughs with me in this golden room, says,
She had a beautiful death, didn’t she?

That day (I heard)
you strode into Tribune Bay—Come in, you called to friends on the shore,
It’s warm, like the ocean of my island childhood
You were wearing that caftan, the one with the bold flowers
hummingbirds divebombed, believing you were a garden
which you were   which you are
even as your heart bloomed into a dream of dying,
into my pulse
so sure in this wholehearted light.

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Jannie Edwards writes from Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta. She has published three collections of poetry and has collaborated on many artistic projects and mentorships. Most recently, Jannie has been working with visual artist Sydney Lancaster on “Make=Believe,” a project centered on a five-acre homestead near the historic Victoria Trail that runs along the North Saskatchewan River. “Make=Believe” is a creative dialogue that explores creating art from living trees and ideas, researching the history of the land, and writing about the intertwined relationships of stewardship, ownership, home, naming and attentiveness.