Some of the boards have lichen on them

in the sun-starved corners

There’s a length that’s been replaced

along the east-facing section

 

The new wood planks abut the old,

adding a sense of acceptance

to the persistence of renewal

 

We’ve hung some of my mother’s yard ephemera

in various places along the weathered fencing

Talavera moons and sunbursts, even a gecko!

Cheerily colored wood and tin birdhouses too. No real order,

but placed where these things seemed to need to be

 

All the generations of avian families my mother watched

make homes in these well-worn roosts have gone away

Her memories of them went away with her too

 

I can feel her memories, the shelter and the peace

I imagine she always found when observing these things

in her garden, when I look out our back door

 

Watching the small, but determined House Finch

sort out the perfect twigs for the remodel

of her brightly painted home with the rusty tin roof