Helene

Helene was my mother's name . . .
And now a likewise-aliased storm
Is wheeling across the Gulf in her honor,
Or so I'd like to believe.
Independent, beholden to none,
Stiff-lipped, toilful,
No-nonsense Yankee,
She chewed up fools and spat them out,
My father chief among them.
The fights between her and her mother
Were like ravaging tropical tempests:
Windy, prosecutorial blows,
Hyperbole blustering 'round like lawn chairs,
Fondnesses shattered like broken windows,
The past uprooted, the future foredamned.
I sheltered in place,
My father cowered;
When tidal surges ebbed and stilled,
Peace was restored till the next affront.
She wasn't a beauty: her look was stern
And fractured, stony like granite, implying
That Nature had carved her from weather-worn rock.
She worked two jobs, so during the week
I barely saw her--out by seven,
Home by ten, fast asleep thereafter.
No glamor girl she with hair unstyled,
Though late in life she lightened it.
At times she played at being a witch;
However, it's far more likely that
Some blood of faerie coursed through her veins.
She drove at night with sunglasses on,
And pushed her own mower
And trimmed the shrubs
And paid off the mortgage
And took me on trips
And wondered about me
(But only found out
Through ESP channels:
Acquaintances of the third degree).

This is the most I've written about her
Since "Mockingbird Song."