"Lavendar" was written in memory of my friend Marg Weaver who died of ovarian cancer about a month and a half after I wrote this. It was a class exercise based on poems in the book Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O'Neill.

LAVENDER                    

Lavender's time is an in-between time,
The break of the dawn, the end of the vine,
The scent of the violet, the burst of a plum,
The depth of the sky when the day's about done.

You see it in tulips, bachelor buttons and asters,
Smell it in autumn when rivers fall faster
Than maple leaves bearing a tinge of this tint,
When grapes stain the fences and air is like mint.

The lavender sound is a spring peeper's peeping,
A white-throated sparrow giving voice to spring speaking,
A saxophone crying, next flying, now moaning,
The delicate calm that succeeds heartache's groaning.

Lavender's feeling is reflective and flowing,
The mirror-smooth surface that shows last light's glowing,
The clearest cold lake in your mind's eye's best dream,
The wash of the waves that leaves everything clean.

And so, lavender lady of ours, you are going
To hyacinth 's flower before clover's last mowing.
This in-between time has been finer than sky,
Wine sweeter by far than an eagle's high cry.


-Mary Mullen
Feb. 12 & 13, 1990