The Pruning Years

The years she has left in her body
Age-tremor in her left hand,
Yet her eyes still dance
Like the old cities in the East;
And the grace she once loved
Is given away: some china doll
Now smiles with her face.

Like a templed butterfly
In its chrysolite cowl
She reaches down to my vernal flame;
My measured grasp of her hello
Palms her winged hand;
My mind loses to her zithered timber
While the lifespan in me
Blends in her beam, then...disbands;
I search within my sacred smoke
For clear words to say, but only find
A requited mother's honor that
Effleurages forth with the tillage of flowers
I now must share in her pruning years
Where all blossoms tremble to live
Then inevitably fall as fruit.

—Dumas fils

As an educator no part of the Bible is of greater value than are its biographies. Conversely extended: for a biographee, what they are is what has been written (educated) into them; these inner-man things are what they will love writing about....

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