Volume 13, Issue 1
Winter 2006

The Christmas Cactus The Christmas cactus has only one bloom this year, as if it is grieving for you, as I grieve, remembering how before you fell ill, you drew your jacket up to shelter me in the woods at the onset of a storm. You said that evening you might die before me-- as if the shock of the sudden winds had foretold the future to you. You dreamt two nights later of a house with a back door. Outside a rose bloomed in a well-kept garden. Is the after-life like that? A door I open into a place where I feel the owner's care the single rose the all-pervasive heather praying to God?

At the Boardwalk Gulls cried. our talk filled an emptiness I was always feeling and still feel, numb like the railings against my thick hands. Walking down dusty avenues I remember your eyes bright and clear, your long hands light and floating like leaves falling. I cannot find you easily although our talk covered the spaces between things, like snow in December coating the branches.

---

A Brief Bio:

I have published two chapbooks of poetry, Departures and The Street Where I was a Child. I also published a novel, David and Ellen's Story. My poem Canada Geese won 3rd place in the annual Poetry Superhighway poetry contest this November. I continue to write about nature.

Copyright 2006 by Linda Benninghoff - No reproduction without express permission from the author.

Letter to the Author: Linda Benninghoff at Benningln@aol.com

---