"Farewell to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.
"The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
And my knife is in his side.
......
A girl on the stairs listens to her father
Beat up her mother.
Doors bang.
She comes down in her nightgown.
The piano stands there in the dark
Like a boy with an orchid.
She plays what she can
Then she turns the lamp on.
......
About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.
It must be Nova Scotia; only there
......
Mama, come back.
Why did you leave
now that I am learning you?
The landlady next door
how she apologizes
for my rough brown skin
to her tenant from Hong Kong
as if I were her daughter,
as if she were you.
......
From ocean's wave a Wanderer came,
With visage tanned and dun:
His Mother, when he told his name,
Scarce knew her long-lost son;
So altered was his face and frame
By the ill course he had run.
There was hot fever in his blood,
And dark thoughts in his brain;
And oh! to turn his heart to good
......
My children tell me of a mystic
Living by the lake
In a green and purple house
Surrounded by gardens of giant flowers
Who takes small dreamers
On uncharted adventures where
They choose their directions and she
Finds their way
My children tell me
......
Here I sit
On my mother’s tomb
It was only yesterday
I was in her womb
She was here
One minute
And then
She was gone
It is here
......
Gratitude knots in my throat.
I am surrounded by the bounty of her sacrifices, yet I let it slip through my fingers.
My heart aches with the weight of her expectations, each one a burden I fail to shoulder.
I am the idle child in the garden of plenty, the squanderer of every gift bestowed upon me.
It’s 3 am Mama,
mama I woke up
to the
footsteps
thudding
around
the door again.
Please don’t leave
no Mama don’t.
......
Once a princess
Is now a queen
Working for the kingdom
Is all she has been
She was a beautiful princess
But now a caring queen
Got a lots of work
Works for making peoples happy and keen
......