Sunday, January 22, 2012
Lavender Grace
Patricia Goedicke's Poem
IN THE OCEAN
At first my mother would be shy
Leaving my lame father behind
But then she would tuck up her bathing cap
And fly into the water like a dolphin,
Slippery as bamboo she would bend
Everywhere, everywhere I remember
For though he would often be criticizing her,
Blaming her, finding fault
Behind her back he would talk about her
All through our childhood, to me and my sister,
She rarely spoke against him
Except to take us by the hand
In the ocean we would laugh together
As we never did, on dry land
Because he was an invalid
Usually she was silent
But this once, on her deathbed
Hearing me tell it she remembered
Almost before I did, and she smiled
One more time to think of it,
How, with the waves crashing at our feet
Slithering all over her wet skin
We would rub against her like minnows
We would flow between her legs, in the surf
Smooth as spaghetti she would hold us
Close against her like small polliwogs climing
All over her as if she were a hill,
A hill that moved, our element
But hers also, safe
In the oval of each other's arms
This once she would be weightless
As guiltless, utterly free
Of all but what she loved
Smoothly, with no hard edges,
My long beautiful mother
In her white bathing cap, crowned
Like an enormous lily
Over the brown arrow of her body,
The limber poles of her legs,
The strong cheekbones and the shadows
Like fluid lavender, everywhere
In a rainbow of breaking foam
Looping and sliding through the waves
We would swim together as one
Mother and sea calves gliding,
Floating as if all three of us were flying.
**********
I found the haunting image above here
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment