Red clay always reminds me of my mother,
neither born nor buried in such bright, heavy earth,
but in between found a patch of her own and claimed it,
tamed it with horse shit and other black offerings,
night after night as the sun went down behind a rise
so gentle she would hardly call it hill, much less mountain.
She knew her mountains, the shadows they made.
Here, only her shadow bent and rose,
bent again to make the bed her lilies would lie in,
then spring forth year after year.
Come fall she would press her small foot
hard against the spade’s square edge,
push it deep into the layers of soil,
a dangling cluster of pale bulbs
flung at my feet, carried north to my garden,
clay still clinging to their roots.
She’s ash now, her garden mowed over
and sown with someone else’s seed,
but the lilies still bloom by my door,
red as wet clay.