Submitted for your criticism

[spikepipsqueak]

A smell, a spell of weather
Just the same
And there she lies.
My mother, withered
Shrivelled in her bed.
Though long years lost,
I see her still

At cricket with the kids.
In crosswords sunk.
Exchanging cross words
With some old drunk.
Indomitably defending what she held
Most dear. Unending
Stacks of books and no clear
Space to sit or swing a cat.
Cheerful, brave, alert
And independent. Fat
As butter, fit as a cricket.
At seventy, relegated
To wicket-keeper.
Lack-of- sleep-er
Through the World Cup season.
November makes me sad.
She’s the reason.

[YesNo]

Nice remembrance of your mother. The rhyme held it together.

[prendrelemick]

That's my mother.

[Jerrybaldy]

It's a good poem I enjoyed it but there is no need for the last line. You have shown us that all the way through. No need to tell us at the end.
Best wishes
JB

[spikepipsqueak]

That's my mother.

:) Then I make you a gift of the poem.

I don't think my mother was unique in her attitudes though there aren't so many women who sit up for weeks watching the soccer from Europe and drag themselves off to work getting blearier eyed every day.


It's a good poem I enjoyed it but there is no need for the last line. You have shown us that all the way through. No need to tell us at the end.
Best wishes
JB

I appreciate the feedback. It feels unrounded without, and I have never been good at the cliff edge ending. But I see what you are saying, and I will tinker.

[spikepipsqueak]

I used to send my heart across the sea.
Notional fragment of me
Flapping wildly against gales
To light in your dovecote.
Safe. Warm. Welcome.

Today I sat beside the silver sea,
Next to the raging waves and felt
My heart sit leaden, lumpen within me.
Imprisoned where the wind won't find it.

Kinship bond with the Mutton Bird
Who, isolated from his kind,
Exhausted from a flight too long
Dropped to earth to end his time.
Lucky wee sheerwater, being dead,
You never felt your heart pecked from your breast.