A Morning Moment Poem by RIC BASTASA

the old woman wrapped in
wrinkled skins
passes by the garden of
daffodils
tended by my wife
in her mid-forty
the usual good morning are exchanged

she is shaky and i think her bones
rattle her back arched perhaps
like a gate of the chinese temple
in macau

the daffodils do not appease her
anxieties anymore
her children gone on lives of their own
their own children and affairs
are their own concerns now

she walk away carefully and slowly
to avoid another fall
i can see and hear
my wife has again sighed three times
to the wind
as she looks upon
one wilting daffodil which she thinks
is infested by
a fungal colony...