One carnation broke off from its stem
while I was arranging the vases –
one white carnation
from a bunch of whites and reds:

colours of Poland’s flag,
symbols of death and redemption.

Grass was wet with dew.
Birds sang in the face of the rising sun –
a handful of visitors was already there,
lost in their own thoughts and spaces:

in the Polish section of Rookwood Cemetery
on Mother’s Day, in the year 2001 –
whose gates were crowded with flowersellers
and their buckets of chrysanthemums.

Another year. Another visit.
I placed the broken flower
at the base of my parents’ headstone
and stepped back to pray
without thinking about loss or death –

remembering that carnations were
my mother’s favourites
and their name means ‘flower of the flesh’.