Daughter Of Mariana

Daughter Of Mariana
© Surazeus
2016 02 17

She runs so eager, fast across the park
of laughing flowers, she forgets to stay
rooted to this real world of mundane facts,
and flies instead beyond the Eye of Earth.

Yet here in quiet garden of our home
her body remains wearing white straw hat
as gnarled hands, still dusty from school chalkboards,
plant seeds of memories in dreamless soil.

She looks at me and smiles with tender grace,
repeating her first smile the hour we met,
yet her eyes stare empty as tumbling space
between galaxies that spiral away.

Though I sometimes wrap understanding arms
around her shoulders, I feel fragile shell
of her diminished soul, like garden shack
of wind-fractured wood, shudder at my touch.

I wonder if she pauses on her flight
past every nameless planet, found so far
to spin around far distant suns of hope,
and glances back at where I read her book.

Because I often pause in cricket twilight
to listen for her gentle voice that cracks
windows of insight, like pond ice in March,
and watch her words swirl on green insect wings.

She waited seven years during world war,
touching blackest moss of cracked flower pots,
like Mariana wishing she were dead,
while eating pears by laughing gable-wall.

When I returned, her tears, that fell with dews
at eventide, nourished flowers that see
a million miles into my empty mind
and know how the sun weaves dreams in my brain.