Annual Planting

It’s late at the Super 8.

There’s dirt under my fingernails even though I wore gloves.

I have one pink geranium I couldn’t make fit.

The urn for their flowers that I bought new last year was damaged by the winter.

My husband left four stones on my parents’ graves to show that we had been there.

I wiped down their headstone and that of my grandparents, wiped the old mown grass away with a rag.

In the late afternoon sunlight, both of the rose-colored stones shone just a little bit.

I would have sat there all afternoon, on that little hill admiring the trees, except we were in a hurry to go somewhere else.

I planted geraniums and petunias and plants I don’t know the names of until the urn was full and worthy of its job of showing the world that my parents had people who will show…