ManicDDaily

A Mother’s Loss

She was my first friend my own age
to die. Not by accident, not
by her own hand, but with
advance notice, and against
her will.

She tried to block it, to barricade death’s door as if
with couch, desk, table, only she
used organs–

The teen-long legs of her daughters dangled
from the arms of chairs in her last room–while her own
arms–arms that, not long before, would have lifted a car
if it had pinned one of those girls–tendonned the
coverlet.

I tried for poetry–she liked
poetry– but all I had rock-solid
was Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” and as
uplifting as those words
might be – I will arise
and go now – they were chunks of pavement
in my mouth, the roadway stuck
below the pinioning car,

her clenched face drawn
to different lines, lines that resisted
far shores, lines that radiated only
towards the two girls lapping the stiff-backed chairs.

Batting away silent
linnets’ wings, her croaked voice stretched across
the tubelit glimmer: have you
finished your homework? Did you get enough
to eat?

At her memorial some weeks later,
her daughters, poised women,
shook hands with all who came.

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Sorry to be so gloomy of late! (I think I need more sun!) The above poem, about which I am still very uncertain, was written for the dVerse Poets poetics prompt hosted by the wonderful Stu McPherson on growing up. I am also linking to Real Toads Open Link Monday.  The photograph was taken by Raquel Martin (with, amazingly, my iPad). All rights, as always, reserved.