As many people know, I love to garden and find great comfort in digging in the soil; in planting and watching new life form. I learned this love from my mother, who now due to Alzheimer's Disease has lost her ability to enjoy her lifelong love, gardening. It is for her that I wrote the poem. It was one of the last times I saw her in the garden and enjoying herself.

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The steady gentle hands which I once held are now wrinkled.
Small walnut coloured spots from the sun lay as a map to former years.
Full of rough cracks, I observe wounds which have long healed.
I want to reach out and hold these hands and yet I stand at a distance.

Like God Himself on a far away exotic island,
she takes the untilled earth and with great meditation breaks it;
letting it fall smoothly through her fingers. 
I observe as she reaches into the dark brown
and gently places a new green shoot, just for her pleasure.

Tenderly on the ground, she pats and pampers the dirt around her.
With fresh water she silently pours, bringing new life to the wilted.
How can you stay there so long without moving? I whisper.
What is it you see in the earth below you?

Bent in space, she lingers over her creation.
A smile, which only she is capable of, spreads across her face.
Looking up she catches my words, only slightly.
“It reminds me of you,” she says.
“I remember when you were once this small.”