Susan Daniels Poetry

I never sent you print birthday wishes,
Preferred telephone calls or jotted notes,
But today marks eighteen years, my sister;

Eighteen unsent happys, full of frilled quotes
And cured cursive, unabashedly winked
Across a rainbowed river of milled hope

Meant for what’s living in us, that trite ink
Cartooning affection.  But we don’t send
Cards to the dead.  Your gifts are flowers, pink

And unsigned; begonias I plant, their stems
Tangled together, these blooms in part sun
All I can give you, this lemon-rose scent.

***At dVerse we are trying our terza rima.