Tuesday Poem: from Kitchen Sonnets

Kitchen Sonnets 3

Sometimes I feel ten years old, watching you
in the kitchen. You are mixing mash for the hens.
I will feed them, gather the eggs, carry them
carefully into the house. Did you ever wonder
how eggs in the nest bear the warm weight
of the hen and do not break? Here I am now,
older than you ever were. I don’t feel wise,
but astonished to have arrived in this body.
Every year there is more I do not know.
There is so much I would still ask you, but
you would not know the answers, even if you could speak.
I am the child who has run ahead on the path.
I glance over my shoulder, you are no longer there.
I am as strong as eggshells, and ready to break open.

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Since Mother's Day has just passed, I decided to repost this which is one of three "Kitchen sonnets" first published in Takahe magazine and later in Flap: the Chookbook 2. My mother died fairly young, and I have been older than she was for several years now. So this is posted in her memory.

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