And my little sonnet is called Reverence For The Mother
and for The Dead.
Oh, that's not the way.
I think this is the right word.
I'll soon find out.
Reverence for the mother and for the dead.
Above the fence flowers like a bloody thumb,
a hummingbird was throbbing, throbbing.
Some bluebells took motion now from the beaten wings
and hardly observable obscure quivering.
And there was the mother.
So still her very clothing seemed
to be settling into stone, and nothing
to animate her face, nothing to read their whole plastic rose.
Oh, ecstasy.
Oh, tall cedar.
And she would be kneeling there forever,
where noon fixed her with its bright Medusa glare,
or in the boy's memory she would.
And then a young Black snake startled from its sunning
slid down from the slab and through the thick grass
and hid somewhere among the purpling wild verbena.