Cup

At the foot of the Flint Hills
she fills her cup of loving kindness
with time-brewed patience.
She greets each day with smiles
less forced than when she grinned
through our common years.
Her towhead boy trips at her feet
weaving in and out of routines
like his brother, the tiny poodle.
Together they are her classroom
heeding instruction, ignoring direction,
teaching her in repetition.
Birds take flight and she counts them
as friends, her friends as loves,
and the coyote as a sister.
She knows her moves like the stars
and the western clouds that blow up
our storms over her first.
We hear her sigh and laugh and cry.
We dream of her and the what-was.
We pray her cup of patience holds
unlike the center they say slips away.