Oh for a picnic!
Three girls in the wood -
the tall grove leaned over us
as our mother would.
Oh for a picnic!
A quilt on the sand -
the sky reached out white
as a mother’s hand.
Oh for a picnic!
Just two on a hill -
you may kiss me again there,
Love, if you will.
Behind us in sunlight
the long-dead were prone:
the hearts they broke passing
were far from our own.
I’ve since been astonished
to greet my own dead,
for now that hill yard
is my mother’s strange bed.
Oh for a picnic!
Her grave at my back,
and You at my side -
my Love and my Lack.
