A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years

A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years

For fifty years my mother’s bones lay still
above the Mohawk’s blue and sun-streaked line.
They don't hear the wind whining up the hill,
or hopeful birds, or cheerless songs of mine.

They wouldn't know the one she used to call
“the shy one in the corner of the hall.”
Long past her age, and with each July,
I've grown more gray and wrinkled (but still shy.)

It’s good she never sees in her repose
the deeper hole in which I've dug myself:
the stark result of dreaming, I suppose,
with half a century of dust left on the shelf.

It’s just as well that separation hides
the tacit disappointment on both sides.

Oh my! Between the unforced poise of this and the restless heartbreak running through it, I don't know which pierces more deeply! Such seemingly effortless control over such deep sadness. You ought to be very, very proud of this.

I will be copying it to Favourite Poems.

Ah, Prince, you are too kind. Thank you.

Honest, non-sentimental pathos. Not sure I've ever understood the value in that 'til just now.

Thank you...this is very beautiful.

I am very impressed by this. An elegy with a difference

This is a quiet corner to stop, look around, breathe for a moment and ponder the realities of life. That you can do this, Aunt Shecky, gives so much depth to the humor you bring to your other work.

Thank you, everyone.

This is a truly gorgeous and deeply poignant sonnet, Shecky! Sentiment sans-manipulative mawkishness, a kind of calm sobriety with simple, elegant words. I adore your playing with concepts of time and space in each line; from 'fifty years' in line 1 to 'half a century' in line 12. I especially love how you bring the two subjects together in the first three stanzas, expressed as a kind of 3rd-person observation of the subject about the speaker, only to, in a kind of quiet devastation, talk of separation and disappointment in the closing couplet.

Brilliant.

I have neither the education nor the eloquence to leave any comment on this, nothing I can say will say what I want to say, except may be if I uttered the word "exquisite!" repeatedly in rapture.

so good, so very very good! this is a feeling I can relate to but have never been able to express, this is definitely one of the best lit-net poems...

Thank you, MorpheusSandman, Symphony, and Helga.

absodangloutly beautiful memorial sonnet! :thumbs_up