My Mother's Grave (A Sestina)

My mother's bones lie beneath the snow
below the frosty apron of a tree
in a wintergarden carved in stone
behind a skirt of locked iron gates
that protects an empty church from theft
by children left bereft of love.

Reservoirs sustain her blood-rich love
displayed across the face of snow
& betrays her restless heart the theft
of sleep beneath the roots of her adoptive tree
with spilled immortal energies that cling to gates
conformed outside her bed of stone.

Here, I can revive hibernal lips of stone
& rejoice within the echoes of her love
all through the night as rising gates
of dawn remain covered in a skin of snow
& winter fruit grows closer to the tree,
a vigil drawn against the early stain of theft.

Yet, while I slept in empty pews, death foretold the theft.
Behind closed eyes of dream I glimpsed a stone
pressed on the leaves shed by my mother's tree
that told the threat unveiled by her unending love
before new earth could dust the snow
or roots might grow beyond closed gates.

By chance a blossom strayed outside her gates,
restoring with the gift of faith, the right to see the theft
of trust that rests unseen buried in the snow.
Alone, I daily rend from lethargic stone
the dutiful constraints that are the death of love,
to tend in gracious sacrifice, the garden of her tree.

No leaf will fall unnoticed nor bloom drift from the tree
until the guiding eyes of age come stave the gates
in resigned devotion to the memory of immortal love
of those forgotten by the dreadful theft.
Sun lights the steps that led my mother to her bed of stone,
that I might lie immune beside her footprints in the snow.

Winter molds the tree of stone until spring’s theft of snow unlocks
its frozen gates and love returns each fallen blossom to the bough.