LIKE ACID ON MY TONGUE
Confined to bed where, racked with pain, she cries
each time she moves an arm, a leg, I see
my mother, once so strong, now old and sickly.
I hardly recognize her as she lies
there, looking through me with milky brown eyes,
her lips like wings of fledglings flapping free.
My heart is breaking. It wants me to flee
from her. Go far away before she dies.
Instead, I take a seat beside her bed
and speak to her of days when I was young,
a life’s review, I doubt she even heard––
this loving woman whose passing I dread.
“Goodbye” burns now like acid on my tongue.
I touch her hand. I will not speak the word.
Bionote
Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose work has appeared widely. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award. His poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared widely in publications that include New York Times, U. S. A. Today, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National Enquirer, and Christian Science Monitor. His short-short story collections, Flashing My Shorts and 200 Shorts, published by All Things That Matter Press, are available in book and Kindle editions at http://www.kindlegraph.com/authors/sambpoet. Visit him at http://salvatorebuttaci.
wordpress.com. He lives with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.
Thank you so much for publishing my sonnet here at your excellent site! I am honored.
ReplyDeleteSalvatore Buttaci
the honor is ours, dear Salvatore, and we look forward to receiving more of your work down the road! happy writing and have a great springtime! -pp
Deletethe honor is ours, dear Salvatore, and we look forward to receiving more of your work down the road! happy writing and have a great springtime! -pp
DeleteBeautiful!!
ReplyDeleteA poem about a subject adult children dread or have experienced. Bravely sad and dreadfully real poem.
ReplyDeleteAs always, Sal has celebrated the most basic of human experiences with skill and beauty.
ReplyDeleteTouching...almost dramatic. It would be wonderful to hear it as a recitation.
ReplyDeletewe all are going there...sooner or later. Remind us of the fact that nobody is immortal . where we came from is also our destiny to make the circle complete as in your Mother's eyes-She- now sightless and blind as you once were - born helpless and dependent upon her...it is wisdom to know our past and remember the future. My mother died in a car accident when I was young ...so I never saw her real old or dead. I think she chose her death...She died and left me alone...without any family or home - It was on the eve of my first art show...I didn't paint again until I was forty five years old/ Her death was the one single event that changed my life. I was in Venice at that time..she died outside Verona on her way to see me.The blue pearl necklace I gave her broke and the beautiful blue pearls scattered all over the highway....I refused to look at her in the coffin. I don't visit her grave.
ReplyDeleteShe was reborn as my child 30 years ago. I believe it is HER, my mother reborn....same soul in another body...recycled souls.
She won't be any where near to hold my hand when i die.