~TERRENCE SAVOIE~

MA MÉRE

---

 

We happen to stand at the same red
light on the corner of Oak & Michigan,
a dowager with a glass cane & her
shopper's netting of fruit & vegetables
for the day & I with my hands empty.
She looks up, smiles & extends her
groceries then takes my free arm
at the crook of the elbow in an Old
World way, demurely, as though I, her
son, had just arrived to squire her home
& this was what we did each morning
of our lives, cross that crazy street, a son
& his aging mother doing what mothers
with sons were somehow meant to do
from the day she suffered my birth,
bravely cross together before cabbies
run her over, but when I deliver her
& her treasures to safety on the curb,
she bows & kisses my hand, leaving me
lost about the proper way to say goodbye.
 
 
 

© by Terrence Savoie