My mother's poems

She used to write verse once, my mother.

Then she aged; her memory faded.

I give her the poems I’ve typed

‘You wrote them,’ I tell her.

She reads, laughs. ‘Not bad.’

Then she recalls

Writing them;

And tears

Fall.

This poem celebrates the poetry that Mum once wrote but can write no longer.

I wrote it on 7 January 2020, after talking to my mother at her aged care home in Camberwell, Melbourne.

It has a nonet structure, beginning with 9 syllables, then 8, 7, 6, till you reach 1 syllable.

If you speak with an Australian dialect, the syllables work okay. But if your dialect is American you may read 'memory' as three syllables, whereas it's only two for an Australian, as in 'mem'ry'.

See: https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/my-mothers-poems-d02e6d6551b5

Photo: michael-dziedzic-9oCQMfFPN2c-unsplash