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Minnie Rose Lovgreen signing her books at
Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, May, 1975, Bainbridge Island, WA
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Minnie
Rose Lovgreen, 1887-1975
- She skipped lunch to work the garden.
- Spring had been late.
Poppies
- had self-seeded through lettuce.
- She tied up the pole beans
- with saved twine, wilted
- weeds in piles
- to be dug in.
-
- Fingers crusted, she worked
- till the sun was butter churning,
- roses funneled wild from all gardens
known,
- and she crumpled like a burlap sack.
- Sunstroke, she thought.
But sun
- had nothing to do
- with the flowering in her blood.
-
- After the funeral
- we are all
- invited to tea
- at her house.
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- It is a fine day.
- The sky is blue.
- Not a cloud.
-
- On our laps
- the teacups pose.
Geraniums
- scream from the flowerpots.
- Outside, in late sun,
- chickens take dust baths.
- Already the gravensteins
- hang in tight green knots.
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- Old woman,
- I brought you roses and baby’s breath
- in a mason jar
- one week before you died.
- Past the oxygen tubes
- you tried to tell me again
- they
had been your bridal bouquet.
-----------Nancy Rekow
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