SAYING GOOD-BYE, a dream-based poem by Patricia Kelly

SAYING GOOD-BYE

To keep my hospitalized mother company
I sculpted a brown clay horsehead
out of my love with my determined
ten year-old fingers, then sent it with my father
on his daily visit to her distant room

I next made a daffodil, one of her favorite flowers
cut out of oak tag, with petals laboriously colored
in layers of yellow crayon, and a stem
of twined pipe cleaners, then sent it also
in my father’s care

He said on coming home that night,
weary and clearly wearing a “good face,”
that she’d happily stuck the daffodil
at a jaunty angle in the top of the clay horsehead
and placed them close by on her bedside table

A few short days later the call came, that somehow
I had known was coming: Mama had gone home,
but not to ours, not to her husband, son, daughter,
and with no chance for good-byes

Years of unfelt mourning passed
followed by many more of letting go
and then the gift of a dream:
her small, tender kiss on the crown of my head,
good-bye’s bittersweet piercing

* * * *

The late March 2008 dream on which SAYING GOOD-BYE is based was actually only that closing image of my long deceased mother kissing me on the crown of my head. I was initially going to write a dreamku on it, but decided I wanted to get some background down. Then as I began to write I was caught by that memory of the daffodil horse. (Horse image above by Roswila.)

I've noticed there's a type of poem I write, like the one above, in which the entire body of the poem is a rather prosey "set up" for a single closing poetic image. (Others I've posted here like this: FRIENDS and THE EMBEDDED COUCH.) I'm not certain if this then means they should more properly be called prose-poems or not. But I do know they put me in mind of the writing form called haibun. In which (very briefly put) a prose paragraph is capped by a haiku. A haibun can also be a series of prose paragraphs, with haiku interspersed. You can read a dream haibun of mine in the post directly below this one, and for a variety of modern haibun check out CONTEMPORARY HAIBUN ONLINE.

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blogs ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL and ROSWILA’S TAIGA TAROT, and Yahoo DREAMJIN: Group for Dreamku – Haiku-Like Dream Poems.