Mending by Loralee Clark
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| Image | Yan Krukau |
Mending
Another evening, another ignorant of memory
comes clad in porch light
to trade paper money for poultice:
medicine for medicine.
The child struggles with her tongue’s weight
not to curse her mother’s yellow life—
good enough to heal in secret, not good enough
for light of day.
She hovers above her mother,
having answered death’s call herself,
having listened to the history contained in her flesh,
having shown the world who she is
and believes her mother is only filling the world with
duplicity upon duplicity.
Who can be comfortable with a heart full of lies?
Afternoons, in the garden, her mother strips the comfrey leaves
laying them in the basket atop the lavender and thyme.
As she makes her way into the kitchen
her hips ache and the limping begins.
She steps into the kitchen; at the table,
penciling out the scene of a forest, her daughter
begins a tentative beat and absent-minded humming.
It is a gift, a small pathway into her daughter’s heart.
The pestle and mortar, green with use, wait on the counter
for her to grind the comfrey to elixir.
These hands that soothed the girl’s aches,
that braided her fine hair, are aged now--
deep channels and love’s softness.
With them, she pulls the leaves apart,
picks the needles of thyme
sprinkles them into the mortar,
breathing their dark warmth.
She uses her daughter’s tune to sing a song of earth,
of leaves rotting to fertility,
of all that ties us to life.
Truth shines brighter with time
and her mother waits patiently
in between the shadows.
© Loralee Clark
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| Loralee Clark |
Loralee Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/
This is a beautiful love poem, Loralee!
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