Benediction (For My Mother)

It is time to rest.
The meal is finished, thanks expressed,
overcoats collected from the closet
and guests gone home.

Dishes were done,
put in cupboards in record time;
the beds stripped bare
and sheets already laundered.

We agree. It's time.

Christmas lists
will take care of themselves.
We will sing the song
"Little Girlie with the Golden Hair"
and recite the poems
of Robert Louis Stevenson
together.

It won't take long.

The pillow of earth is plumped up;
bed clothes of grass
have been gently put back
for the rain.

When again you wake,
it will be to lost childhood and song.
You will hear from friends
what in memory
you, too, believed to be true.

As in life, you’ll come
to the very first page of a book
where the first lines run
from memory.
You repeat by heart.

You'll be asked to name
the brands
that were always your favorites;
give a quick review
of your recipe for cherry cobbler
and the fish-based stew
known simply as African rice
for which you grew
okra
from African seeds.

As a student in front of the class
you will add the sum of your achievements,
weed out the many disappointments
with a chalk so light
it immediately erases all scores.
You are now free.

It will seem you dreamed
and awoke to the thing you most wanted,
as I once awoke
to a brand new bike on a morning
mixing rain with smoke
and knew
for the first time pure joy

while the Christmas rain
turned swiftly into Christmas snow
you had hoped to see
like a beacon
up on Mary's Peak.