Mother
"When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument."
C.S. Forester's "The African Queen”
MOTHER
(A MUTTERING)
My sweetheart gin is cast.
I stare at her reflective glass.
Like a crystal ball I see the past.
A small boy in prayer at mass.
Oh how blessed is my sweet Ma.
Her sweet lips pressed to my brow.
Back many years, I obeyed the law.
Now swirls of sin seek the cutlass-crow.
Her handkerchief, fringed with soft lace,
would erase the smudge of familial rift.
Her tender hands’d touch my small impish face,
until the day I’d hop a ship and wrongly drift
with suntanned palms, filled with whorish gin,
to never see the waterfall, the etch of tears,
the gray-spun wool that prayed to squelch my sin.
Oh mother, if I could find those wasted years.
I lay my head down on this feverishly cold bar.
Every muttering sold as slave to my abysmal past.
Your sky blue eyes hearken from heaven — so far
from the deepest well of wailing gin, that sinks me fast.
Ne’er woman clothed in silk or satin bait,
were as attentive as my ma’s eyes of grace.
Foolhardy fisherman, I’ve hooked my fate.
Now I drown my sorrows, in the darkest place.
2/25/2018
Gin In The Morning contest
Sponsored by Julia Ward
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