QotD: Favorite Poem
What is one of your favorite poems?
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.
I actually heard the poet, himself, read this one to a group a few years ago. It lived with me for a while after that. I hope you enjoy it.
Visitation
December 2001
At Serenity Gardens, winter
has surrounded us. My mother's room
is way to warm for me,
just right for her--with an extra sweater.
Outside, this uneasy year, her 93rd,
lurches through December.
She is surely serene in this place,
thanks to whatever goodness;
queen of electric piano.
Among my chief duties now
I have become her human calendar,
a stay against time, her reach for the past.
Each visit, we review the years.
We sit and we talk, fragile mother,
absent-minded son.
This afternoon I assemble for her
some semblance of my long-dead
father, the only husband she had.
I tell her his story.
We study his photograph.
Do you remember him, I ask?
She looks again.
No, she answers softly. No.
But isn't he good looking?
She smiles, I chuckle.
In the gathering dark,
we cry a bit together:
I for what she has forgotten,
she for what I remember.
by John Stone
from Music from Apartment 8: New and Selected Poems
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