The Onion-Grass Girl

What does it take to bring us together?
A death in the family and traveling weather.
Through grey streaks and wrinkles and bittersweet smiles
I can’t help but see us with the eyes of a child.
A dutiful daughter, a delicate mother
Our faces are stories written one upon the other,
Shifting pictures in a restless sky
(The onion-grass girl watches clouds go by.)

It’s eighteen years since the house went for sale,
Now I’m standing at a cottage from a fairy-tale.
The sleepy comfort of tobacco fumes,
A coffee-grinder in a midnight room,
The elderly creaking of the easy chair
(And the onion-grass girl with the golden hair.)

How many faces can a memory hide,
And how many march into the devouring tide?
(With onion-grass pillows and onion-grass mouths
We wondered what we’d be doing now.)

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