Born and raised in Iowa, she lived the second half of life in Hawaii.
She knew snow bitter cold as well as she knew a sultry tropical breeze,
Fields of Iowa green corn and lurid azure of the Pacific.
“Corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July”, she always said.
Once proud, tall, imperious,
At the end, she was stooped
And round shouldered:
Her widow’s hump.
Neck permanently stretched outward and down;
If you want to meet her eyes,
You must bend your knees a bit and look up,
Even though you are taller.
She knows a thing for an instant
Then it melts away without her noticing.
She travels from here to there,
People morph one into another;
Time, geography, people, thoughts are fluid
She asks when my brother was born
What savage aberration stole that precious date
Her first born’s birthday?
Her darling red-haired Ballard boy?
For her, there will always be turquoise, indigo and an Iowa green that revives the soul
I carry her colors onward through the years
Because she cannot.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem