Forsythia will forever remind me

of my mother stealing

branches of it outside the Doubletree Inn

in Murfreesboro, Tennessee,

for her mother’s funeral. Stupid strip-mall

side of town we’d gone to for Starbucks,

caffeine fortification and an Office Max

to print the programs. That’s one facet

of the end: your family scrounging the city-side

for something pretty as tribute under the eyes

of Ruby Tuesday patrons. Here I am,

still young, young-ish, no kids, perched

in the bland middle swath of my life, wondering what

I’ll pilfer for my own mother’s ceremony. Her own

purple irises, perhaps, or if in winter

the prickly stalks of thistles, brown

and old but holding magnificent

crowns of snow: translucent sculptures

of time I’m taking from some future to let

melt in my present embrace of eventual grief.

I know each moment I poach just repopulates.

Something borrowed is the standard rule

for weddings; something stolen, my new protocol

for funerals. Here I am, young, my whole life

ahead of me! Whole life-ish. I shouldn’t dwell

   on any of this. It’s the start of spring. Everyone

is still alive. Everyone, within reason. The yellow

   branches of forsythia are fireworks, shedding

bright sparks in piles on this parking lot.

   There’s a Starbucks nearby, no matter where I go.

There’s a big box store, a row of measly 

   ornamental shrubs, a tree or two.

There’s the present where everyone lives, now

   studded with moments I’ve robbed from a time

I imagine, in which a child watches me scavenge

   the landscape for bits of beauty,

learns how to do it herself.