Birthday Wishes: Horatian Ode
Sweet sixteen with no happy birthday cake.
Oh, Mother, you're missed but I am bitter.
How many hundreds did your calloused hands make?
So steady, so sure, why do they quiver?
A Mother who has no thought for herself,
A daughter too immature to think to help.
A lovely, womanly form, but only Momma to me..
Oh Momma, she has your eyes so you can watch over me.
Abducted suddenly from youth, captive in haggardly age,
Your battle with scalpels left their jagged marks…
Just as your ancestral Natives wore paint when war raged,
It was your way to push back at the dark.
If time were a river, I'd gladly jump right in…
To dark, freezing waters, no matter, I'd swim…
To try to give back a portion of your goodness and light,
Stand with my back to yours and together we'd fight.
I don’t write sonnets,
or limerick verse
I don’t write haiku,
though often terse
I don’t write ballads,
or Horatian odes
I don’t write parables,
to self-implode
But I do write in rhythm,
and often in rhyme
With meaning that’s buried,
and metered in time
All verbal indenture,
I must disavow
For the meaning to rise
—when the fates do allow
(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)
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