Pink

My mother loved pink,

Elsie

the pink of early dawn,

the pink of a shrub rose,

the shining pink inside a shell.

She wore it often.

Pink set off

her fair English complexion,

her plump face,

her brown hair,

hazel eyes.

So the adolescent I once was,

skinny and blonde and green-eyed

and in every other way not my mother,

chose orange instead.

The orange of the sun,

the orange of tiger lilies,

the orange of tigers themselves!

It clashed so nicely with pink.

My mother is long gone

so I,

grandmother, mother, but no longer daughter

except in the recesses of my heart,

don pink,

at last.

The pink of evening clouds,

the pink of blossoming crabapples,

the pink I remember in my mother’s cheeks.