I get it now

It's a day you would have loved, Gran
Everything is violently alive today
Birds chasing one another to lurid acts in the
boughs of the trees
Screaming for partners in an endless sea
of green
I know you watched this same scene on the
hills where you grew up
Standing beneath a flat cloudless sky
I see you as a black haired moppet
Never too far from a disinterested sibling
charged with your care
I see you so far removed from the woman 
you were when I was a child
You might have gone outside today, Gran
Watched the children laughing and running
with your rhuemy eyes
But the laughter you heard was that of your sisters
You are first a little girl, no bigger than my
girl now
But as you cross the field, away from your
little white house
Day turns to night and then back to day
Your uncertain steps become confident
strides
I see you as you were once, a young women
starting her life
You traded homemeade soap for a life with
my paw
The hardness of time gouging lines in your face
You'd have gone inside and cried today, Gran
I'd have laid my head on your shoulder, not
knowing why
But today, I know why you cried, and I cried
for you
You were once at the beginning of your life,
young, unafraid, in love
Anyone who knew you then had died or
gone away
There was no one in this world with whom
to share your pain
I wish I had been older, so I'd have understood
I hope wherever you are now, you know that
I do