Hour of the Mother

by Jeffrey Essmann | August 12, 2020 12:04 am

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This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by E.P. Cowley.                                                                                                                          

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Hour of the Mother

Her face a gentle mirror of his
as she sat by the open window
eyes on the distant hills
“We’ll go to Galilee soon”

and John with his back to her chair
said, “Yes Mother,” but he could not look
at the long dark hair
eyes alight with waiting
so like the son she laid in the tomb
just yesterday
and he was very dead let me tell you
but madness sometimes rises out of grief.
“We may as well go now”
I said in the silence
all of us choking on other words
unsaid.

“Not yet,” her cupped hand outstretched
to the empty sky filling with light from the setting sun
she said, “Let’s wait and see what happens
in the morning.”

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E.P. Cowley lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she works as director of a small after-school program for at-risk children. She is author of the novel Closing Accounts, as well as of Ordinary Sea, a book of poems used by her local parish during Lent and the Easter Octave. To read more of her work, visit https://www.greenhillsrising.com.

Source URL: https://integratedcatholiclife.org/2020/08/poetry-hour-of-the-mother/

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