My Mother's Colors Poem by Rebecca Duncan

Born and raised in Iowa, she lived the second half of life in Hawaii.

She knew snow bitter cold as well as she knew a sultry tropical breeze,

Fields of Iowa green corn and lurid azure of the Pacific.

“Corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July”, she always said.

Once proud, tall, imperious,

At the end, she was stooped

And round shouldered:

Her widow’s hump.

Neck permanently stretched outward and down;

If you want to meet her eyes,

You must bend your knees a bit and look up,

Even though you are taller.

She knows a thing for an instant

Then it melts away without her noticing.

She travels from here to there,

People morph one into another;

Time, geography, people, thoughts are fluid

She asks when my brother was born

What savage aberration stole that precious date

Her first born’s birthday?

Her darling red-haired Ballard boy?

For her, there will always be turquoise, indigo and an Iowa green that revives the soul

I carry her colors onward through the years

Because she cannot.