Cherry Willow Weeping

I’ve forgotten so much. I didn’t know as a child that I should have held on to the curves and turns and straight-aheads my parents drove to the homes you and your husband shared with us, with the rest of the church. The cabin your husband loved is only a glimpse of water the men fished on; a screened-in porch the youth occupied during dinner before the devotional began; the idea that there must have been trees all around. My mind has hacked the forest away, a lumberjack felling old growth only to abandon the trunks and branches for my neural pathways to decompose and reclaim. I can’t pick out which of the one-storeys past the park was the house you loved, the one where you hosted all the ladies and little me. The landmark I knew of was the weeping cherry willow my mom and I adored. It's probably gone—fallen or decayed or replaced—but I remember it, and look for it still.

Ghostly, your willow

weeps pink perennially

in my memories.