She Does Not See My Heart Like a Tree

She does not see

My heart, like a tree

Shedding its petals; sweet, soundless its fray

Spiraling, drifting

Pausing then lifting

To plunge to their rest as childhood falls away

She does not know

How the ebb and the flow

Of time is a subtle, unassuming thief

Or how the heart fills

With a child’s tender thrills

Only to relinquish them; leaf by precious leaf

She does not feel

The haste of the reel

Ticking away moments and hours, then years

All she can see

As she waves merrily

Is a mother, bravely smiling through her tears

© Janet Martin

This morning I decided the pink mittens that Victoria has worn for years will go in my ‘keep-chest’. She likes pink mittens and little pink mittens have waved to me faithfully every fall-to-spring school morning since her junior-kindergarten year(she is in gr.6). The image is etched eternally in my heart, as are the love-tugs.Since she has two older sisters I now realize, more than I did as they were growing up, how quickly this will be history.