Jo March

Dedication to my Grandmother

 

I remember your gentle hands 

Warm like a downy blanket

Soft like a plush teddy bear 

Tender like a cotton snow pillow  

 

I was only a five-year-old 

And you were my guardian angel

With slinky-like silver ringlets in which 

The sun’s golden rays often hid

 

I was playing on the floor 

Toys lay scattered round me

Evening had just descended wafted 

Through windows by autumn winds 

 

I remember how you came 

Light-footed like a being

Not from this earth   

And patiently gathered my toys

 

We played with them you said 

Now it’s time to put them away

They are also tired…

They tried hard to make me happy… 

 

I remember you walking with me 

You were in a warm winter coat

And a fluffy dandelion hat 

Gray-white like an angel’s wing 

 

And every morning 

Your tender warm hands 

Prepared crispy pancakes 

Fringed with buttered lace 

 

But I had to leave you… 

For a long long time 

Had to turn the corner with

A heart-rending glance behind me

 

There you stood waving to me

Your soft wrinkled cheeks

Golden-waxed with crystal tears

Your gray-blue eyes aglow with love

 

As a child I often wondered 

What happens to an angel’s soul 

After she leaves our earth?

This brittle but rose-dream world?

 

Perhaps you became a dandelion

Bent by the wind on a blue-blue lawn

What was I to know? 

I was just a little girl 

 

But I knew that angels have wings

And I think yours were blue…

To this day I long to ask you: 

You were always a blue blue angel, right?