hosanna in the highest

when i look sideways to my right
i see nine oil daisies growing
from out of the slate blue flag stone
where my grandmother (after spending
nearly five full minutes looking
into her passenger side mirror
fixing her steel-gray hair while my
ever-patient grandfather
marvelled at her beauty)

plucked them with her neatly
manicured fingers (each tipped
in dusty rose )-- stashed them
in her 90-year-old mother's plain hexagonal vase
put them on the table
and painted them.

when her mother died later that week
she laid them on the grave
as he held her by the waist
her body seized by soft sobs
and the acceptance of joy and release.

When I look to my left
i see an empty wall that I need to paint.