National Poetry Month Challenge - Day 16

Today's challenge was to write an elegy - a poem about someone who has passed.  Here is my offering.  One hour before midnight ... I made it just in time!  Vera would be proud.

Golden Threads

Show me how to do those leg lifts, Cristina.

I need to learn.

You know –

Tissue only likes the white cushion

to sit on.

Nothing but the best

for my Tissue.

Vera loved her cats.

We have that in common.

She also loved her kids.

Her girls, by marriage,

and the many foster children

she raised from her soft hips.

A voice like honey –

hands made for cooking chili –

Vera held the world close.

She sewed until her hands

were broken from arthritis.

She mended minds.

She mended hearts.

Vera was the mother to all.

On the day I found out she died,

there was a rainbow in the sky.

I rushed home,

thinking my own mother had taken ill.

We sat at the table,

after the phone call came through.

Mother to many –

Vera was gone.

We remembered her –

the golden needle –

the silver thread.

Somewhere close

she is mending fabric –

making clothes out of bread.

Cristina M. R. Norcross

Copyright 2014