Sheela Free

Open White Magnolia

In Memoriam
My Daughter
My Father (Physician, Healer, Soldier, UN Peace Keeper)
9/11

Open white magnolia
sweet smelling as the June gloom
that etherizes all of Socal right about now
that I fought to get planted in memoriam
open white magnolia
dominating my kitchen window in every way
just as you did all those up and down years ago
just as your sweet memory does today
all these 23 years later when you came to be
all these 12 years later when you ceased to be
physically, only,
you fill every nook and cranny, every rafter
with your sparkling laughter
allowing me to mourn you, grieve you, celebrate you
to my heart’s content.

Open white magnolia
spilling its myriad tiny yellow red tipped stamens
everywhere, to spread its fragrant life all over CA
innately, softly just as you did,
spilling, spilling, spilling
its stamens all the time, every day,
unseen, unheard
just as your memory does now,
piercing the June gloom
leaving me agog, gasping even
at its relentless force, its raw edginess,
its jagged truth, its grasp.

Open white sweet magnolia
only for a day or two
sweet surrender to your life force
is all but inevitable, so I do
with a thousand sparkling tears
staining my smiles,
gathering the greatest solace
that you do matter,
that your sweet memory does too
etched in those ever spilling stamens
just for a day or two, spilling, spilling.

Flowers are sacred,
so the Vedas say,
so are you-now, in the guts of the open white magnolia.

~

YouTube video credits (Link to view on Table of Contents):

Technical, props, and the whole making of the MP3 from start to finish, to even the posting of it to YouTube so it would be compressed and easy to transmit, Professor Joe Notarangelo, and for ideas, props, time, and support Professor Diane Hunter. Without them, none of this would have been possible.