Looking at the table to keep the memory of it living:
There being no hedge or fence round time
you can go back, have what you like
you can be the child that was
dipping at the well of remembrance
you can still feel how it felt
as though you were still small
smell the soup
watch it ladled
taste the mutton with your nostrils now
all those people are still alive
some leaning back with their eyes shut
smiling
some speaking with their mouths full
laughing
and you are sitting in your mothers lap.
obeedúid~
26/july/09
Mark,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to hear about your mother. It was a long ordeal, and you and your siblings have shown the next generation how to love and care.
Your poem is beautiful. Here is a similar one by Yehuda Amichai.
My condolences.
Love,
Edie
My Mother on Her Sickbed
My mother on her sickbed with the lightness
and hollowness of a person
Who has already said goodbye at an airport
In the beautiful and quiet area
Between parting and takeoff.
My mother on her sickbed.
All she had in her life is now
Like empty bottles in front of the door
That will show once more with colored labels
What filled them with joy and sadness.
Her last words, Take the flowers out of the room,
She said seven days before her death,
Then she closed herself for seven days,
Like the seven days of mourning.
But even her death created in her room
A warm hominess
With her sleeping face and the cup with its teaspoon
And the towel and the book and the glasses,
And her hand on the blanket, the same
hand that felt my forehead, in childhood.
Mark, your poem is lovely, as is the one that Edie posted. I hope you know to call. I will be home all day.
ReplyDeleteBarbara