The flowering peach,
a daughter's bloom,
each February
she lived
in tiny pink bud.

Her tree fed my memory,
flitted across my vision
with nectar so sweet with sorrow
that the sky wept.

Oh, such weight
the delicate pink
butterfly flower held.
It took her place somehow
and lived for her each year.

A tree-gift from the fluttering
girls and boys of second grade,
now almost middle aged
with children named
Michelle, perhaps.

She will always be eight,
the bright and moving child
of my youth,
so spark and full of fire.
The first that captured my heart
and held it,
she holds it still.

She died again this fall, Michelle,
her leaves turned and bid a final
tremble to the ground.
The tree no longer lives,
just a sentinel stark and bleak
its gamine trunk.

But
under the canopy that burned
my heart again
from brown and rotting leaves
emerges the everlasting
circle of creation,
a fragile new beginning
strong with claims of yes.