Adapting to Motherless Mother's Days
I’ve enjoyed writing for many years. I'm dedicating more time to the craft in my retirement days.
Word Prompt = Adapt
Congrats to my friend Brenda Arledge on her 52nd Edition of "Word Prompts Help Creativity." It's been a long and productive run for Brenda, and for the HP community writ large. Much has changed since edition one came out more than a year ago...but the community still thrives despite all the changes. That is the very definition of adapting, I do believe.
Though I have not participated in each and every challenge, I've attempted several along the way. This latest response approached me on Mother's Day 2022 as I was remembering my mom, who passed away suddenly in 2013 of a heart attack. I miss her everyday, and miss her profoundly on Mother's Days. Perhaps I'll never adapt.
Adapting to Motherless Mother's Days
If I could call you today
Here’s what I’d say
But I can’t
Phone works fine
Better than the rotaries
With the party line
From my time
As a kid
When the neighbor could listen
And did
Human nature and all
I digress
And I'm just getting started
Already broken-hearted
Anyway...
Happy Mother's Day
Is what I’d say
If you were here
To hear
Today
But instead
I'm lamenting
Even after these many years
Resenting
Your goneness
My orphanness
It’s sunny now
On this Sunday
Mom’s day
And partly clear
But like an overused metaphor
I’ve overused it, for sure
And reused it
Many times
Making rhymes
Telling sad stories
Piecing together words
To silly, unrequited love songs
That never get heard
Or poems that never get read:
It will rain this afternoon
That’s the metaphor
And my eyes will fill
At the same time
And I’ll hear the score
In my mind’s ear
From Butch and Sundance
Unwritten words
“No lyrics found,”
The search says
And yet I can hear the phrase
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Badaba ba badaba baba
From “South American Getaway,”
And think back to days
When I was young
And you were, too
And I miss that you
The one
Who danced and sung
Like nobody was watching
Even though we kids
We always did
We watched
Maybe we didn’t know what to think
Were you approaching the brink?
Whoever else is so care free
And footloose
And loving life?
What a great lesson
To pass on
To little ones
For when they grow
To be big ones
In a world
Everchanging
Needing some rearranging
Stranging
Truther than fiction
The evening news depiction
The unending friction
Between divided sides
Hard not to be rapt
And hard to adapt
To a division
That deep
And wide
Deep
And wide
Deep
And wide
So not nice
Let's say it thrice
And today
I can’t hide
Way down inside
That even though I’ve tried
To adapt
To a world without you in it
There never passes a minute
An event
A thing
A moment
That doesn’t remind
Of those times
When I was very young
And you were young, too
And when it was this special day
All those long years away
From today
I remember I’d say,
"Happy Mother’s Day!"
And work to make it that way
Something better than just ok
And you’d always say,
“Thank you, my son
So far, it’s been a good one.”
And sometimes pictures were snapped
For posterity
And now as I look at them I see
In brightest Kodachrome 3D
All those fond memories
And I know it’s going to be
Impossible for me
To adapt completely
To Motherless Mother’s Days
"South American Getaway" from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"
© 2022 greg cain