My Mother Is Young

 

At day's end she folds her blouse
and places it on a footstool.

She raises her arms to receive her nightie

as it floats around her in faded flowers,

blue and yellow, the parchment

of leaves falling to earth,

falling into her lap.

She checks the basket on her walker

for her nightly needs.

 

The art of submission:

walker replacing cane

cane replacing dancing feet

dancing fee replaced by buckled shoes

that ran through the raspberry patch

whose pointed thorns couldn’t catch her.

 

She grimaces in the mirror

and yanks a comb through her hair

still black at the nape,

in the mirror of her mind

my mother is young.