After my Army basic training at Fort Sill, I came home and helped my dad take care of my mom. She had asked us to move her into my sister’s bedroom, where she could enjoy the sun, birds and multiple summer colors in her front gardens. We repainted the room soft yellow and moved her bed so she could see out the front window. It was my first summer home for many years for I had become what priest/poet James Kavanaugh called a searcher or a life wanderer.
My mother’s looming death brought me closer to the poetry she loved, and I spent hours reading to her, and sharing the poetry I was reading like Kavanaugh’s There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among the Wolves. The moments I had with my mom that summer drove the poetry I was writing as a life wanderer and still write today. “I would gladly give up / A few of the soft tender moments / I have yet to experience // To savor once more / That summer / Wrapped within your soul.” Thanks mom!
No comments:
Post a Comment