In the April of Covid 19
Day 18
“Forgotten mornings where he walked with his mother through the parables of sunlight”Dylan Thomas
Fourth Station
It was my thirty eighth year
After winter when you passed into the swallow
Hallowed and star pointing dusk
And I knew
No matter how long the journey into night
I would never awaken again to your
Easy laughter, your easy tears
Your hand
I held close with a daughter’s hand.
Here, again, is the sun of April, showery
Swallows spinning
Woollen clouds of your birthday away
And myself to set
Paint upon the canvas of another year’s turning.
The fourth station of our paths crossed
Mother and child
Always ends in farewell
After, Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
On the anniversary of my mother's birthday.
Skylover Wordlist: Stations
Play It Again Toads: Encouragement
Reference: The Fourth Station of the Cross is significant at Easter as the moment Jesus of Nazareth met his mother on his path to execution.
I do not practice religion, but my mother was born on Easter Sunday, so I have used this motif.
This is a beautiful poem....in and of itself. It is made even more beautiful when reading your notes of explanation that follow.
ReplyDeleteThese lines are especially beautiful to me:
"Swallows spinning
Woollen clouds of your birthday away"
Thank you, Lillian. Kind words.
DeleteThis is such a heart-stirring and beautiful tribute, Kerry! I especially love; "Woollen clouds of your birthday away
ReplyDeleteand myself to set paint upon the canvas of another year’s turning."💘
I remember my mother in my paintings, because she taught me! Glad you liked that image.
DeleteIncredibly poignant Kerry.
ReplyDeleteI'm woefully behind .... so am slowly catching up, both in reading and writing .... so I'll just drop this here, if it's okay - and return tomorrow, to continue along my reading-comments journey.
ReplyDeleteso for #s 8-10: craft, prayer and sticks" -
https://indigomidnightwildchild.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-scream.html
thank you - and pray the heavens everyone is safe and well ....
Lovely, thanks, Pat. Always good to have your participation.
DeleteI love 'the swallow / Hallowed and star pointing dusk', and all the echoes of Fern Hill which yet make a poem so specifically your own. I don't practise Christianity either, so didn't understand the significance of the fourth station – but now that I do, I think it's a wonderful motif for this piece: powerful, and very apt. Above all, this is so moving.
ReplyDeletemany thanks, Rosemary, for your heartwarming response.
Delete"I held close with a daughter's hand......", the swallows spinning the birthday clouds away, and "Mother and child always end in farewell." So moving, Kerry. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sherry. Always hard for me to write about real emotion, when most of my poems are imaginative 'spinnings'.
DeleteA stunning poem and tribute, Kerry! I especially love the lines:
ReplyDelete‘After winter when you passed into the swallow
Hallowed and star pointing dusk’
and the repetition of ‘easy’ conveys the close relationship you and your mother had. How beautiful to think of her as a swallow returning in April, always ending in farewell.
There are some things which remain with us, when everything else is gone, returning with the seasons like the swallows.
DeleteThis is such a moving example of a deep, abiding love, and loss - but also of the bonds that can't break - as witnessed by time's turning and passage. It truly is just beautiful Kerry. It really is.
ReplyDeleteYou've dug so deeply withing your own experiences and used such stellar language to lift the moment to the light - both of the night and day - and we can't help but soar, like a swallow, even for the grief and mourning, yet inexplicably feel Lightened. Ravishing. Quietly ravishing - a psalm.
Your sojourn with Thomas is illuminating all of our minds and hearts, Kerry. This one is both stately and abandoned to the language of all grief's penetrating symbols. Where Love has been, death can't steal our memories.
ReplyDelete