Dear Mutti
Olive stepped among the blue carpet of scilla and white snowdrops, spread across the neighbor’s lawn, iced-over after yesterday’s heavy snow.

I told her: Those are the ones I brought Grandma Win every spring.
She doesn’t know she misses you, yet.
Spring is a cruel companion this year, taking you from us.  Then bringing you back each dawn, each rain, each sun-soaked afternoon.  Under the moon.
In the night sky.

Listen to I’ll Be Seeing You

I’ll Be Seeing You. “Cathedral bells were tolling.”
Song for Winifred. With thoughts of dear Paris and Notre Dame Cathedral.
My mother taught me this song when I was 16. I still have her sheet music, marked with the breaths. I sang it at her wake.

Iwona Biedermann photograph,
Jamie O’Reilly, Winter 2019

Recording Souvenir, 2008
Jamie O’Reilly vocals
with Michael Smith, guitar
Bob Weber, cello.
Peter Swenson, engineer