To a Redbud

When I heard your name,      I thought lipstick,cardinal, ketchup, pigeon-blood ruby,     something sanguine––

all the while, two weeks a year,     you flowered something the field guide calls “purple/pink”     with an air of defeat.

You haven’t bothered with leaves.     Furred with petals, you race the wild plum into bloom.     You cloud the sky.

You’re childhood’s Horse Heaven Hills     come back in dream, dirt painted purple by dawn.     The Greyhound bus

that no longer runs––it trundles     over White Pass, the only passenger the ghost     of my mother.

Dead two years, she loves to travel     so lightly now. She’s tumbleweed curled in her seat,     prickly as ever––

if she still finds Seattle “excessively green,”     she won’t say. Why am I not there to meet her?      Even in dream,

the living keep themselves busy,     betraying the dead. Flowering Judas, they call you,     redbud not red.