Repose

Mother's Day here in the States fell this past Sunday, triggering memories of my own mom. I wrote a series of poems about her in the last years of her life, and here is one of them.



Repose


How many afternoons
do I find you drifting?

Still willful as a two-year-old,
still the gracious doctor's wife.

Head burnishing the rocker,
wig aslant, almost asleep

eyes closed, mouth open,
open book yawning at Chapter Two.

At ninety you protest any need
for a nap, ignore advice to the contrary.

Like Busch, your once beloved
German shepherd, you sit content

with the quiet, resting in mid-day
languor, aware.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor