"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”

Thursday, January 28, 2021

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.

5 comments:

Anthony Duce said...

Enjoyed. A visual vignette of small paintings of a life in wonderfully placed words.

Liza said...

Oh you painted such a picture. Many years ago, my father said, "You always feel like the same person, until you look in the mirror."

Yvonne Osborne said...

Tony,
Thanks!

Liza,
Thanks so much. He was wise. I have a dimmer in my bathroom!

Sherry Blue Sky said...

At our core still lives the young girl, the young woman........I could see her so clearly in this lovely poem. I am reminded of my grandma, in a nursing home, complaining about being among "all these old people" when she herself was in her 80's. Smiles.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Hi Sherry,
Thanks for commenting on this poem. In our minds we will always look the same. The mirror is the enemy of the brain! That's funny about your grandma. I totally agree!