Lottie McDuffie

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Mother Snow

I call my old dog, Rufus,
And climb the mountain,
And go down into a little cove,
To visit my friend and neighbor, Mother Snow.
She's been living in the cove
Since her oldest child
Was born.
And now he's sixty-four.
We sit in her kitchen and ponder her future.
So to her can come no harm,
We are as careful as a captain guiding his ship
Through a mediterranean storm.
There's seventy-five dollars
In the blue pitcher above the stove.
It's all that's left of working and living
In the house in the cove.
With gnarled hands she pours tea into my cup,
And she looks
Out the window
At all the wood she's cut.
She says her fields won't be planted this year
As she's now eighty-four.
And the money she has left,
Is in the blue pitcher above the stove.
It's strange how one mother can raise five children
and keep their tears dried,
But five children can't care for one mother
Until the day she dies.
Is it because they don't have time to come to the cove?
Or is it because there's just
Seventy-five dollars
In the blue pitcher above the stove.

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