You want to write about your mother’s body,
but instead you try to get the dirt
out of the grout, or make a nice dessert
for Tuesday night, or bleach the toddler potty.
You try to write about her fading grave
in dim half-rhymes like have or saved or faith
while your kids scream and scatter dust like wraiths,
and dance around that perfect rhyme, forgave,
so perfect you can’t use it. It’s too pat.
Some rhymes are all used up, used up like breath
and death, used up like every mother’s strength
by bedtime, when there is some time at last
but no rhyme left to offer except yours—
this weary body, quiet now like hers.
J.C. Scharl is a poet and critic. She is the Seminar Manager at Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Poetry Editor at Plough Quarterly.
