Poems with Symbolism

Two oranges in my jacket—heavy as the future, round as the world I wanted to give her but couldn't afford.

A blue bowl waits on the table, patient as a patch of sky. It has held pears, keys,

The chair remembers your weight. At dusk it turns toward the window, expecting your book,

I folded yesterday's bad news into a small white boat and set it on the gutter stream.

My mother never measured flour. Her hands knew when the dough had listened long enough.

All winter my mother carried my coat across her arm because I was too warm,

Her kitchen light stayed on until every child was home. Even after we had keys,

She did not keep me small. She kept the door: oiled the hinge,

On Sundays he polished his shoes at the edge of the bed, small circles, black cloth,

He taught her how to leave: check the tires, carry water,

He never said be patient. He handed me the line, pointed where the current slowed,

The bicycle moved because his hand was gone. I shouted when I noticed,

She took the photograph so everyone else was in it. Later I found her reflection

Two mothers at the doorway, each holding something wrapped, each pretending not to worry

Not a life without weather. Not a road without stones. I wish her a coat she trusts,

She does not ask what I need. She brings oranges, sets them in a blue bowl,

Your name remains in the group chat, a small green circle beside the last thing you said:

My mother's voicemail says hello with no knowledge of the future. She is probably in the garden,

We mark the day quietly. No candles. No wish forced through smoke.

You were telling me about summer— a cabin, the lake, how this year we should finally go.

He knew each field by the way rain stood in it, which gate sagged,

Before sunrise, the barn light came on because he did. Cattle shifted in the dark.

His hat remains on the peg, rain-dark at the brim, a pale line where the sun

Hosanna fills the road, bright leaves against the dust, children learning joy

One candle remains. Then even that small flame is carried from the room.

The oldest member carries keys to rooms no longer named: choir cupboard, furnace stair,

For soil we did not make, rain we could not schedule, hands that planted before ours:

May these keys open more than locks. May they turn toward welcome,

The apartment is one room and three brave windows. She owns two plates,

She has a key to my house and uses it mostly when I cannot:

The landlord painted everything beige. We drove one nail above the secondhand sofa

The gate he built still drags one corner through the dust. Lift, then push,

A child pins a paper poppy slightly crooked on her coat. She knows the word remember

We crop the washing from the chair, the argument from the doorway, the hour we spent not speaking.

The women came carrying spices, not certainty. Morning had barely found the stone.

No thunder follows. The horizon opens and closes its pale electric mouth.

At nine the garden is still visible, though supper has been cleared away. A moth works the lavender.

The afternoon closes before the dishes dry. We switch on the lamp at four, set soup between us,

The water holds no explanation. It receives the child's forehead, the trembling hand,

The Son stands ankle-deep in Jordan water. The Spirit descends—not captured, not owned—a dove's brief shape

We had closed every window and called our fear prudence. Still the Spirit came—

After the blessing, a glove waits beneath the third pew, two programs hide under a chair,

After my son moves north, his room becomes mostly floor. Tape marks remain on the wall.

We fill a shoebox with useful things: a bus card, two recipes,

At the end of the wedding aisle, one chair holds flowers instead of a body.

Before the first dance, she slips into the quiet corridor with her father's photograph.

On moving day you place my spare key on the kitchen counter. For six years it meant:

After the church dinner, five men begin stacking chairs. The oldest carries two at a time.

She keeps one place beside her without guarding it. A cousin sits there at Easter.

After graduation rehearsal, he clears the locker of one bent ruler,

Confetti keeps falling after the players stop running. One team lifts the cup.

The ordinary jar was half full. The floor still needed sweeping. Then a greeting entered the room

We still buy the cake you chose, though nobody wants the corner piece now. Your birthday arrives without permission.

In every childhood photograph, you are leaning into my half. We fought over the window,

For sixty years, they have disagreed about tea. He leaves the bag too long.

Her number remains in my phone under Mom, as if the word could still connect us.

The recipe says a handful, which was precise in her hands and impossible in mine.

You are still my daughter. You are also the person a child searches for in a crowded room.

His chair remains at the table because moving it feels like a decision. I sit beside it as his wife.

He takes the certificate with both hands, careful not to bend the gold star.

The reservation is cancelled by snow. We eat pasta in the kitchen, coats drying over chairs.

In his wallet, behind the license, my father kept one photograph: him at twenty,

Aunt Louise places your church hat on the front pew, wide brim tilted toward the pulpit

They call me by a number because the hallway is crowded, not because I have become one.

My mother signs her name on the final line, then reads it once more.

The library writes deceased beside your name and closes the account.

On your birthday, I plant nothing new. I weed around the lavender