ode to Mabel

Mabel is breathing....
    no one ever visits.
She has tended flowers and done laundry all
    life for others.
No one needs her.
    She has a bad knee and
Neuropathy , subsists now on pain medication and sugars.
    No one calls her.
She envisions one day getting flowers.
    Or hearing again from that gentleman, who
twenty years ago smiled.
    Or her children or grand young ens';
but no one writes her one letter.
     In the cold she wears all those sweaters she knitted.
no one remembers her.  I will!
    I visit and bring the flowers I grew specially
for her,
    the prettiest yellow roses,
while she lives!