POEMS FOR MY MOTHER

A LAVENDER UNEQUALED LOVE

You spoke to me softly when I was a baby,
Knew I was fragile, knew I could break.

And you cheered as I cleared the hurdle of crawling,
The daunting stunt of walking upright.

You dried forgotten playground tears,
Cooked and cleaned like a woman possessed,
A legend in your own time with wide-eyed kindergartners.

You taught me to drive when I was a teen.
Fearlessly you braved me at the wheel,
As I ripped around corners and parallel parked,
Slamming on the brakes, dodging last minute dangers.

You were there for me at college,
Where I tried to make you proud.
And you listened to Barry Manilow records
At decibels quite loud.

You were there for all the ceremony,
The scandal and the bland,
And when I struggled drowning,
You led me to dry land.

We shared a wiry, precious pup,
Who turned into a wise sweet friend.
The sweet joy of his growing up,
Our anguish at his passing.

We've shared ups and we've shared downs,
Sarcoidosis, Parkinson's,
Country drives and coffee breaks and quiet confidences.

We've shared Judy Collins on balmy Wolf Trap evenings,
And a lavender unequaled love that grows with passing seasons. 

REMEMBERING YOU

I want to live fearlessly, gather the wildflowers,
Praising each second, extolling each hour.

To awaken each morning with pure gratitude,
Embracing the present, remembering you.

To go on a magical journey through time,
A lavender journey with laughter and song,
Buoyed by the love and the company of friends,
Those precious companions that follow along.

I want to have a laugh of honey,
To think the best of everyone,
To trust the hand of Providence,
Taking each day as it comes.

To eat and drink with merry gusto,
To savor with supreme delight,
All the tasty treats before me,
That tease and tempt the appetite.

I want to live kindly and patient and wise
And see the world through your graceful green eyes.
The way you made allowances for man's unpleasantness.
The way you opened up your heart
And poured forth sweet forgiveness.

I want to live fearlessly, banishing sorrow,
Praising each second, each shining tomorrow,
And then in the twilight of my last dying moon,
To light all my candles, remembering you.

I MOURNED YOU EARLY

It was a gradual parting of the ways
To the woman I loved best of all,
A slow methodical decline,
I saw the writing on the wall.

I mourned you on my birthday in the year 2001,
When Judy Collins sang My Father,
And I thought of you, my mother,
And our seasons in the sun.

I mourned you oft on Friday nights,
The night of our weekly pizza feast,
When the truck bearing your oxygen
Sat parked along the street.

After your trip to the doctor
And your latest breathing tests,
The concentrator in the foyer
Became our uninvited guest.

I mourned you in my bed at night,
Listening to the motor of that lifeline grim,
Archiving my memories sweet,
Cleaving steadfast unto them.

I mourned you at your brother's funeral,
Portable oxygen at your side.
Still your effervescent self,
In your wheelchair on its maiden ride.

I mourned you at Judy's Wolf Trap show,
Will The Circle Be Unbroken pierced the summer evening air.
Its story of a mother's passing streaked my face with silent tears.

I mourned you at each intervention,
Each hospital and nursing home.
'Til at last I stood in your hospice room,
Your last breath spent and your spirit flown.

I mourned you early, loud and long,
I mourn you still, the memories strong.
And late at night I lie awake,
And hear your spirit sweetly call.
The precious one who gave me life,
The woman I loved most of all.

EPIC

When they laid your ashes deep in the cold ground,
I felt the loss of an epic love reverberating all around.
In life you were my Iliad, my keenly treasured Odyssey.
When I lost you, I lost Paradise and drowned in the briny deep.

Our love was on the grandest scale,
Like Herman Melville's great white whale.
You were the mother who set the bar that others would aspire to.
And sinking slow in the Inferno was all that I could do.

In years to come I will sing for you a fitting elegy,
But right now all I can do is sift through years of memories,
And celebrate your life through the glass darkly.

For you were my personal Gone With the Wind,
My Ben Hur and my Ten Commandments.
I am numb to the cost of all I have lost,
In the wake of your final passing.

Like my personal Holocaust or my private 9-11.
The sun has toppled from the sky.
A tragedy unspeakable, that leaves this witness high and dry.

I loved you in the classic way, I hold your spirit dear,
Like the Hawthorne and the Faulkner tomes,
The Chaucer and the Shakespeare.

A gentle parent, dearest friend, confidante from birth,
The finest woman in my eyes who ever walked the earth.
In life you were my Hemingway, my Romeo and Juliet,
My Odyssey, my Iliad, my Hamlet and MacBeth.
And when they laid your ashes deep in the cold, cold ground,
I felt the loss of an epic love, reverberating all around.

THE ANGELS CALL US HOME

Softly I call to you here in the twilight
And yet there's no answer and the heavens are still.

When the rain clouds should thunder
And the earth tear asunder,
So deeply I miss you, my dreams unfulfilled.

Softly I call for you, the one I called Mother,
Your passing a darkness that covered the day.

Softly I mourn you, a soul like no other,
A void and an emptiness blocking my way.

Loudly I scream and curse at the sky,
How dare it be sunny, how dare it be blue,
And how dare my life be allowed to continue,
Here in the wilderness pining for you.

As I clean out your basement the memories flood
Of a mother and son and a tie thick as blood.
The awards and the letters and my poems that you saved,
Recipes that intrigued you that you hoped to try some day.

The newspaper clippings and the old Christmas cards,
The pale yellowed reminders of time and all its scars.
The constant echo I hear of your laughter,
Caressing the ceilings, the walls, and the rafters.

How you clung to precious memories,
For in the end they are all we own,
After our last breath is drawn,
And the angels call us home.

OH, HOW I STILL LOVE YOU

Early in the morning, when ghosts still haunt the streets,
I close my eyes and conjure you, and once again my days are sweet.
For from my heart you are never far, fair to imagine,
Like some shooting star that brightens up, enlightening the heavens blue,
Incandescent, ever true, oh, how I once loved you.

And in the glaze of afternoon, when lost in magic sunlight's sheen,
Your memory lives, like a waking dream, to calm my day and cool my feet,
That burn from the macadam hot, like chili peppers on the street.
In my soul you still survive, I keep your essence still alive,
And in the heat and the summer gloom, oh, how I once loved you.

Death is never very far, eternal life, eternal scar,
Scar of passage, scar of loss, scar of tears and chances lost.
Lost to me for now you are, but Death is never very far.
Late in the velvet evening, when I breathe in the musk of sacred dusk.
I can almost feel your spirit hover, under nightfall's sacred cover.
Forever you are still my mother, in my heart you take your throne,
And wrap my wounds in your healing balm, comforting when I'm alone.
Late in the velvet evening, when nighttime's chill it pierces through.
I sit and weep in restless sleep, oh, how I still love you.

-Bruce Potts
Revised Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED