SOMETIMES, THE AIR
on a summer afternoon
feels charged with depth,
the distance of all
that once was–
corridors and trails, shimmering,
all the invisible
sadnesses and radiances of my life–
it keeps them for me.
MUSE ARRIVES IN AN EARLY MORNING HOUR
I like to think she’s pleased by the wide surface
of russet-coloured wood, facing the picture
of Renoir’s ochre and pale pink roses,
a pile of loose paper beside an open notebook whose
silver spirals might remind her of infinities.
And of course the pen, with its tunnel of blue ink
fast-writing like a mountain stream after generous rains.
Some days she shows her gratitude early–
she begins by saying my name.
MY MOTHER AND GRATITUDE
In those last years before the cancer took over,
her feet were always cold, she kept drawerfuls
of socks, the cosy fleecy kind I loved to find for her.
She’d scuffle a bit as she walked, saying to me, “Honey,
your mother’s body is falling apart!” then she’d shrug or giggle
as she crossed from her living room to the tiny kitchen
where she might pour herself a soda, or brew a potful
of hazelnut roast for us to share when I’d sleep over,
her feet always thickly padded with two or even three
pairs of socks, pale pink and lavender, ivory with navy stripes,
it didn’t matter what they looked like, she loved every pair
my sister and I gave her for birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Days
and inbetween, any small thing, she would thank us and thank us
again, as if we’d made another day easier for her somehow,
as if we’d given her the world.
Her Decision
This
time it came not from
some
sprung blaze of the instant.
It
arrived more
as an
ochre mellowing,
a
ripening
in
some untended field.
A
peace whispered to her
Step
away,
a
different happiness unfolding.
(previously published in Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press).
Spots of Time
(with thanks to Annie Lighthart)
This could
be one--
me
wearing seersucker again, fifty years after
I was
the child in the playsuit my Yaya
sewed
for me--
A
coolness embedded in the threads--
breezes
of early June mornings,
refreshment
of my Yaya’s lawn,
its
unmown depths and permission.
If
this fabric were a plant, it might be
a
patch of dew-bright parsley
or
mint, picked just now
from
her everlasting garden.
(previously published in Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press).
Andrea Potos - is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Her Joy
Becomes (Fernwood Press), Marrow of Summer (Kelsay
Books), and Mothershell (Kelsay Books). You can find her poems widely published online and in print, most recently in Spiritus, Poem,
The Sun, Poetry East, Potomac Review, and Braided Way.
Beautiful, as Andrea's poems always are
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