White Dahlias

my grandmother
kneeling in dark soil
touching white dahlias
her hands remembering seasons
her mind has let go

On the surface, this tanka depicts a simple image of an elderly woman in a garden. But the garden becomes a threshold between two kinds of knowing. Her hands move with the confidence of decades, finding the flowers by habit or muscle memory. Her mind, however, has drifted somewhere else entirely. The body remembers what the mind has released.

That tension between what we retain and what we lose is at the heart of the poem. Dementia is never named. It doesn’t need to be. The image carries it.

“Dark soil” and “white dahlias” do subtle visual work together, grounding the poem in contrasts of earth and bloom, the heavy and the delicate, the permanent and the fragile. She kneels rather than stands, which feels important. There’s something devotional in it. What did those dahlias mean to her? How many years has she touched and admired them? She is still present in ways that still matter.

The final line is not necessarily tragic. It can also be seen as acceptance. The letting go is gentle. The hands remain.

My thanks to Alison Williams for selecting my tanka for publication in Issue 4 of Quail Eggs. A special thanks, also, for the last minute edit too! I appreciate it.