Waking A Matriarch Poem by Val Morehouse

The way an 18-wheeler slides into a ditch the dream fell on me,
disturbing, sideways, slick with tears that woke me.
Two months after Mother was gone on Valentine’s Day,
it was unexpected as a spring snowstorm.

“Somebody’s voice was running lines in my head,
‘Across a waste of words she comes’...
Alone among a rise of grassy hills
I dreamed I was wearing her last dress.”

“My God! That voice. Those lines were
my own reciting her funeral poem.”
“This dress, what was it like? ” he asked.
”Pink. It gave back light like a spider’s web.

Silk. To make her beautiful. I picked it for her myself. ”
“And yours? The same? ”
“It was her dress I was wearing, yet not, hers.
Twirling round and round, arms open

in that space, I could feel it brush my legs, different,
pearly satin winding around me tighter and tighter.
“And how did that feel? ”
“Heavy. So very heavy. ”