ABOUT: This was written for my poetry workshop class in college. The assignment was to write about a journey, real or imaginary, and what you see and experience on the way. Another poem about my great-grandmother. Click here to read more poems.

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Out of Season
The car in front of your house as I drive by is not your big white Buick –
That’s long since been sold, and your granddaughter and her boyfriend

Have uprooted the massive pine trees from your front yard and replaced them
With plastic tricycles and baseball bats for the children you’ve never seen.

I wonder if the deer still come around, munching leaves from your backyard trees
Or standing in the street to stop the cars for you. I stop in at the florist on the way.

“Sweet peas are out of season,” she says, “but how about some roses? Or maybe
Some carnations?” So I take the wildflowers instead, because roses are too typical

For you, and carnations are just the same. The marker on the main path of the cemetery
(That’s right next door to the liquor store) is surrounded by the others: your husband,

Who led the way, to your right, and the daughter who followed behind you to your left.
Even her son, who had little chance to live, is among you. Surrounded by family,

Even in death, with your Red Sox World Series pennant still standing proud,
Though you never got the chance to see them win. I place the flowers

On top of the cold grey marker. Doris Elizabeth, engraved in stone and in my heart,
Forever. If I had known then what I know now – that all this would be different

Without you, and that you’d give your all for me, even when you were gone – I would
Have brought you wildflowers everyday that sweet peas were out of season.