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All of This

I am putting God and love together
with the tiny blue flowers in the wild vetch,
with my father who can't move anymore
and has given up the idea of time
in a chair in front of the TV,
with my mother in the nursing home with her seven strokes;
and I want to stop now to think about their suffering
as if they belong together like a Christmas cactus
and its pink blossoms. I want to send them rivulets
and all the sweetness they can hold in their arms.
I want their grief to matter.
And I want God to remember them and make up for all of this
in a sweeping gesture of mercy like a warm rain.

-Anthony Petrosky, 1998