redsoxintexas
New member
I dont udnerstand the last five lines. It seems as though the mother/wife has died but then it says she asks? Is this a flashback? I dont get it?
"A place for everything"
When my mother spoke
of sadness and widows,
my father muttered, "Well, well,"
and shook the paper open
in front of his face.
Now fifty years together
isn't enough. I was wrong about her,
a widow three days who will not
sit in his easy chair.
In their living room I wait to lift
whatever she wants and then
as if I wer a boy again wandering
at dusk I hear her voice fly
across the woods to call me home.
A place for everything,
I thought, was what she loved.
On their unmade bed-a torn envelope,
its birthday card he must have hidden
beneath his socks, signed in x's and o's,
a boy's hand, a boy's gesture.
Seventy tomorrow, she asks
for help tonight to sort suspenders,
trousers creased to their cuffs,
the two-toned shirts she chose for him
and washed and folded and set into a drawer.
"A place for everything"
When my mother spoke
of sadness and widows,
my father muttered, "Well, well,"
and shook the paper open
in front of his face.
Now fifty years together
isn't enough. I was wrong about her,
a widow three days who will not
sit in his easy chair.
In their living room I wait to lift
whatever she wants and then
as if I wer a boy again wandering
at dusk I hear her voice fly
across the woods to call me home.
A place for everything,
I thought, was what she loved.
On their unmade bed-a torn envelope,
its birthday card he must have hidden
beneath his socks, signed in x's and o's,
a boy's hand, a boy's gesture.
Seventy tomorrow, she asks
for help tonight to sort suspenders,
trousers creased to their cuffs,
the two-toned shirts she chose for him
and washed and folded and set into a drawer.