Slim Picking
Slim Picking
For Mama
(May 11, 1920 - August 14, 2012)
I cannot watch your frail frame shrink
in your housedress. Sunny lifts you
effortlessly, you are lighter than a proverb.
Yet I'm glad when his ministrations
are over for that is my cue to get
your bag of bones next to my flesh.
Usually adroit, I am in a panic
when I cut deeper than your cuticle
and your blood spurts before your "Ouch!"
I almost forget the mysteries as, past
the band-aid on your toe, our roles
reverse when I lead and you follow.
Your hospital-scented skull assumes
a pieta-like tableau only peculiarly
for I cradle your idiom feather.
Then I regret that I cannot summon
the stories that I saved before coming
to beg your gossip of old instead
which I used to detest. You smirk,
like you knew I knew, that your few
friends hardly visit to underscore my rare
presence. My heartstrings tug at the guilt
but you are a picture of mischief like
I could not believe. I want to stay
longer than my alibi allowed but insist
my reason was not just distance
and you are irrepressibly perceptive.
I wonder where your wrinkles hide
the tenacity that used to stalk
my whereabouts when you were hale.
Under his breath, Sunny mumbles
you, and a meager dinner, and a morsel
catches your throat, and he cannot watch.
About this poem
A memorial for my mother
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Written on August 14, 2012
Submitted by ham8113 on September 06, 2021
Modified on March 10, 2023
- 1:10 min read
- 2 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AXX XBXX XXXC XXXX XXXX AXXB XXXX XXXX XXXC X |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,249 |
Words | 235 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
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"Slim Picking" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/108691/slim-picking>.
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