Outside my window, standing tall
Their topmost flowers did enthrall
Summer's beckoning - Come Fall!
Up their stalks toward the sky
Lifeless seed pods cluster shy
Will the sparrow gather nigh, or chicky-dees, by and by?
Stooped and gnarled, bones as shale
A once-strong temple, now so frail
Fading esse cupped in a holy grail
Now, not then, was her call
Which season? I like them all!
But now death has cast a pall
For there you lie in pristine repose
While viewers come wearing the garb of crows
Murmuring words - a life now closed
As with the heirloom hollyhock bloom
Withered and dried, the seeds cocooned
In their time to flourish and festoon
Posterity gathered 'round the husk
The seeds all scattered into the dust
A cardinal nearby awaits the rusk
Shook loose from the chaff, and into the earth
Hands so still, now hold dearth
A shrivelled kernel, a racking birth.
Acknowledgement to two of my siblings for the themes of the literal stillness after death and of the similarities between the time close to death and the transition phase of birthing.