|
Book of Poems
|
Aunt
Maggie Mae Harrison-Norton
October 8, 1900-
May 30, 1977
after Bobby’s death, 1936
At the
edge of a highway a child waits
to cross over. He is difficult to see
through the whirring layer of years, almost impossible
to feel. Dressed in a summer shirt, he balances
on one bare foot, then the other,
the sweltering heat of his fifth year sears
his soles, blisters break
into calluses, and I furiously thread
the thinning string of my 36th year
back through the needle of his eyes, form a loop,
jerk an awkward knot in the unsettling tug
between our hearts, whisper and whisper
the way a mother shelters a battered knee
in the shadow of her own body,
the way an animal tears at the placental sac
with its own mouth.
|
