Carnations Poem by Jean Renwick

Carnations on the square plot of lush grass,
trying to say what is never said.
Tears roll down a numb cheek
to seal with a kiss the memory of love.
And the child moves away.

She was robbed of the best years of her life.
Is this God’s grandeur –
the gift to love what must go before?
No one can be who she was.

How soon life bursts a child’s bubble of innocence;
so soon to lose the sunlight from her days.
The child becomes like the fading blossoms
of carnations in a bed of sorrow…

No longer a child,
I am the one who needs everything
she would have given me.
So I wait for the end
that will return me to my mother’s side.

And I will hold in my heart
a carnation that will live on:
a symbol of the never forgotten part of her life
that was shared with me.