An Ode to my Grandma

I cannot begin to write about life

For it is short.
Summed up neatly in a few memories
Like a bundle of old newspaper
Stored aside for occasional reference.
You lived.
And it ends.
Like that.
Neither can I write about death
Death is too long.
Smoked in hazy absence.
Like the mouth of a river
Seared and forsaken by the desert sand.
You died.
And it begins.
Like that.
I think I shall bury you in my unconsciousness
Or my childhood.
You can bring me to mornings.
Or fan me with a hand made bamboo fan
on humid summer nights.
Like you used to.
And you will remain.
A mist my eyes dread to part with
A quietude
this sable night brings.

Reviews

[Shimmerbliss/CAF]

Beautiful...loving, sad, profound. Thanks for sharing it. These are personal poems we write of such losses. The child within us remembers such treasures and sometimes they are too painful to keep in the conscious mind. We all advance in this life, if we survive long enough...then, we are they.

[Abhra]

Thank you!

[Corset]

heartbreaking and so very beautiful, I know I say that a lot, I run out of adjectives for your writings, such a wonderful tribute to a Grandmother, I hope when it's my time to be a grandmother passed beyond my children's children will think of me so fond. :)

[W.k.kortas]

A poem like this too often propels the author toward the bombastic--it becomes important to know how remarkable the subject was, and thus too often a superlative cariacture that bears little resemblance to the real person is the result. This piece, happily, seems to realize that a life, no matter how precious, is made of smaller, commonplace interactions with the ones we love, memories which creep into the edges of consciousness on sable nights.

[Ed Hart]

my wife of ten years moved me to a small town in southern minnesota to be near her grand children...the tenderness you speak of has become a joy in our lives, and i have become a grandpa...thank you for this gentle sweep