Today’s set task is elegy, but with the added challenge of including some very personal tick or characteristic of that person.
My Mother’s Face
At her funeral
Much was said of
Her faith
Her frugality
Lesser known
Was her fierceness-
The Depression kid
With a Roman nose and overbite
Becoming a young lady
When the gloves, the hat
The heels and matching bag
Mattered oh so very much
Sealed your status
Was your Fate.
But without kismet
Best to be discreet
Another most ladylike
Attribute. Decked out
In concaving girdle
The metal garters
Carving into pale
Very slim flesh
Suspending her, engineering
her identity
But the teeth!
That was Mother Nature’s
Bad fairy godmother gift
Beyond any dental intervention
…
The world and women
Moved on.
The gloves came off
Somewhere around 1968
Only a very few women bothered
Wearing a hat to Mass
(In defiance of St. Paul)
Much beyond ‘72
Nuns raised their hemlines
Wimples were bygone
Sister Celestine dyed her fringe
Peeking from a postulant style veil
But that was all fashion
Not faith. For it was, after all
About the principle
Which is immortal, like the soul
…
Only in her sleep
Dozing on the couch during the 11 o’clock news
Would you notice it
Her jaw gone slack
So relaxed at day’s end
The reprieve from the practiced
Thrusting forward of her teeth
Into self-imposed alignment
A discipline, like daily mass
Grace and night prayers
A fierce sculpting that
Was her original face
Sojourning Smith 