My Mother’s Sunset
A poem by Diane Frank

My Mother’s Sunset

What I most remember about her painting
is what she did with the sky.

A band of bright orange, but rapidly fading.

That tangerine stripe at the edge of the ocean,
just before it falls off
at the edge of the world.

I was surprised to see her taking an art class,
but she always had a good sense of color.
Her skirt always had to match her earrings and her shoes.

The food she cooked was colorful –
she taught me to pay attention
to color, spice and taste.

Her voice was another color.
Emotion streaming through a stained glass window.

That was the way she painted –
a wide stripe of sunset across a desert sky
a place where she had never been
a saguaro cactus as a shadow
in the foreground.  

I see it now from my window.
That sunset. This sky.

About the Author:

Diane Frank is author of eight books of poems, two novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Himalayas. While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems won the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Poetry. She’s editor of Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here, and plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony. http://dianefrank.net/

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