Ode To Mrs Miller
I did not know how brave
she was, ninety-two,
and I, seventy less...
so young that old age
was textbook stuff:
a fact of life, but not mine.
I was alive and free
to stride the world,
a colossus of youth--
whereas she had ate
almost a century:
and all her friends
and all her family
lay dead somewhere,
except in her mind,
still crisp, poignant
in its memories...
of a wealthy husband,
a daughter dead young,
her own youth and her
beauty remaining lonely
in a silver-framed photo.
She never complained,
this old lady--never once
did I hear lamentations,
a bewailing for the lost
richness of life:
that ripe fullness
she must have once felt
as a wife, a mother,
a woman of grace and beauty,
a living queen in her time.
Now she lived alone in a cold
basement flat, standing barely
five feet tall--yet I've never known
any being braver. But it is only now,
when I am become old myself,
that I envy such courage.
[rec'd n/a in Brian Strand's #2 contest, judged 6/29/20]
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