Mulberries

    
The summer you learned to let everything go
was the summer I learned how to coax my body through a day,
how to strap it onto roller blades and glide ten miles
with a despondent son.  How to pull that body
through a landscape.
How to perform the simple, impossible tasks
of dinner at a small table, of saying the same things
over and over. How to quietly watch that teenaged son
walk through a new town with kids I was unsure of.
The summer you stepped out of this life
was the summer I learned
about small gestures and beautiful weeds.
Running through fields
and carrying back Yarrow and Queen Anne’s lace.
It was time to take a large life
and fit it somehow
into a much smaller one.
Downstairs the neighbor’s new baby was crying.
A woman across the street brought cookies
on a china plate.  In the backyard
the mulberry tree was wild with starlings.
Someone in a house behind me
began playing the harp in the evenings.
I would sit on the back steps and listen, thinking about
the heart of whoever it was, playing like that.  
What it must know
to play like that.


                                                                From Indiana Review

                                                                         

 

 

 

Latest comments

16.07 | 22:46

Woweezowee, Missy, Congratulations on your new book!!!
This is a great web page where I can finally access all your writings!

25.01 | 00:56

Missy,
I have been reading your poems occasionally because I am not used to poetry and need practice. I LOVE this poem.
xoxx Leslie

28.12 | 18:58

Missy-Marie, first, my best wishes & many blessings for the new year 2015, soon to be! Second, congratulations for all your beautiful master pieces creations.

12.08 | 01:04

Still chuckling as I write this. Wonderful nugget of family life.