Mature Love Eternal

(For Brother and Sister Gentry)

By Janet H. Gambee

With each life-breath

Lenore gratefully dressed each minute,

interring rancor,

weeding out the world.

For they had asked for

life itself,

and mending

by merging faith and powers,

God granted her more earthly

time to love.

Merry tears flowed with her testimony,

igniting the souls who

came to care, and were comforted;

came to give, and were loved.

Still

a rustic rocker on the porch,

an old flannel robe to shield from a wind,

and the Prophet’s words

were her most constant friends.

Time and the living

went hustling by

and their many burdens

only God shared.

One Saturday

she sensed her sojourn’s time was spent,

and sorrowed

at the loneliness he would bear.

As she lay warming his faithful hand,

he felt her watch him

savor his meal,

wistfully:

frail arms couldn’t taste food from tubes—

so from sweet watermelon

she’d been longing for,

he strained a sip of juice

and gently wet her thirsting tongue

with this last taste of earth

as her thoughts turned peacefully

to her temple works

and her Arizona birth.