Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

And as she told me of her dying son
my right eye saw her gray left eyebrow fall
and drape its threadbare curtains like a shawl
around the youthful cobalt iris underneath
its sag-drag skin; and she was one
who spoke of home – of motherhood – of all
that she had done – as if her pastor’s call
were courtesy, a call much more mundane
than waiting prayerfully for someone’s death—
and even someone’s death who’s yet her child.
And she was eighty-two when Bobby died
and, whistling through her missing teeth, her breath
was pleading for dementia’s grace: denial’d
be welcome to the fitless truth she cried.

an excellent poem, Joel.

the description of the old woman's knowing eye is packed with the power necessary to carry the rest.....there is no grief like that of losing a child...