and the mucho years since harriet harris (me late mum) passed remembers that emotional gash, and thus i wished to bestow my heartfelt pain sans this grievous loss with an ode written soon after my mother exhaled her last gasp.
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Goodbye Mother ™ a son pay in (i.e. paean) homage
to his long deceased womb durr full mama
Her cremated ashes scattered to all the four winds
White, powdery and chalk like material
Devoid of any vestigial semblance
To her once living and vibrant self
That unique persona pulverized and vaporized
(Housed former svelte and tall Arthur Murray
Ballroom dance teacher A half-century plus prior to demise
Which beauty, charm and grace
Quickly caught the attention of my father
Who courted and eventually proposed
To this young flirt and tease of a gal)
Inert organic matter now represents
Sole residual embodiment
Reduced to dust and near nothingness
Former corporeal being of blood, bone and flesh
Weighing no more than A dozen hatch marks on the scale
Absence still bears down heavy
Like some millstone round the neck
Per the black hole son voided
Created by defeat with Grim Reaper
Toward this woman
Who helped birth and nurse me into manhood?
Momma’s only grown son Still feel ripples of grievous sadness
No matter the years of suppressed anger and rage
In addition to emotional conflicts between us
Which invariably wrought unpleasant relationship
And a legacy of discord writ large
Across the harris woven tapestry of my life!
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From: Matthew Harris -
quite attentive to communicate
sentiments of paternal love to his 2 charming daughters
4 the hands of father time spin so fast -
mortality an unavoidable fate
thus at this crossroads in life -
cherish special persons, a lesson learned late
while still healthy atop this spheroid oblate
and material trappings minimally i rate
understandable that ye need to mourn
n may for some weeks thee will ululate!