REMEMBERING  HIS  MOTHER

Poem for Today - May 11, 2014

IV

“You see,” my mother said, and laughed,

knowing I knew the passage

she was remembering, “finally you lose

everything.” She had lost

parents, husband, and friends, youth,

health, most comforts, many hopes.

Deaf, asleep in her chair, awakened

by a hand's touch, she would look up

and smile in welcome as quiet

as if she had seen us coming.

She watched, curious and affectionate,

the sparrows, titmice, and chickadees

she fed at her kitchen window—

where did they come from, where

did they go? No matter.

They came and went as freely as

in the time of her old age

her children came and went,

uncaptured, but fed.

And I, walking in the first spring

of her absence, know again

her inextinguishable delight:

the wild bluebells, the yellow

celandine, violets purple

and white, twinleaf, bloodroot,

larkspur, the rue anemone

light, light under the big trees,

and overhead the redbud blooming

the redbird singing,

the oak leaves like flowers still

unfolding, and the blue sky.

© Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, 

The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997,

Page 211-212 [1997]