For Godmother Who Is Still Alive At 85 Poem by RIC BASTASA

godmother writes a letter
complaining that i have not
written about love

that in my youth the poem
was still about the
struggle
for freedom

in a country bound
by oppression
and dictatorship

she vomits the news
of my colleagues
summarily executed in
1975

she challenges me frankly
that i must attempt
to lust, have free sex,
and for once
be crazy about life's
offerings

i was a failure to her

honestly i wrote her a letter
which perhaps she
did not receive because it
was mailed
in the middle of a revolution

i am glad that she perhaps
did not receive it for in there
i wrote 'You are unkind and
suffering from irrelevance'