No Tears For Grandma Poem by Ray Mather

Three sisters
Leaning on a brother
Supported a mother,
Fitfully falling downwards to death,
Dragging their lives
After her own.
There can be no tears for grandma.
Every morning
She was started on their batteries -
The batteries eventually ran down.
My mother,
Hollow-eyed, white-faced, wrinkled,
Became a wraith.
When grandma died,
Brother and sisters
Collapsed in a pile
Like some grotesque circus act
Suddenly overbalancing.
Grandma was eighty-three,
My mother looked older.


1984