'Snowdrops'
My mother speaks the language of snowdrops,
her accent frail and reticent though the words
spear frozen soil and poke from leaf litter.
Her sentences survive all weathers: pounded
and battered by wind and rain, chilled by frost,
they bounce back, irrevocably white.
Their drops of hope arrive in the dark days,
when the cold gives them strength.
What there’s no word for, is death.