A Mother Writes To Her Daughter, In Europe Somewhere With Her Friends

How are you?
Your letters home
are like flower catalogs
to a gardener in winter.
They don’t come often enough.

I have plenty to do
to distract me.
Spring as always
is as busy as a mother
with two toddlers
underfoot.

Your collie Nastasia sniffs
a compost bin, probes
a gopher hole, her head
vanishing!

I lose myself
in a blue hibiscus,
in the froth
of flowering pear trees.

Is there anything better
than orange orbs
dangling
from branches—or the taste
of sweet and tangy persimmons?

Three fellows
swoop down
fluttering onto my shoulders,
clinging to my woolly chest--
just for a moment--
then fly off

the elation of that moment
lingers…

till another
black capped chickadee
lands on the patio table
eager to check out what’s new,

even my cell phone
where she taps away with her bill.
An urgent text?
Then quicker than a wing beat
she is off!

I wait for your reply,
sweetheart