October 2015
I have been writing poetry for about fifty years (where did the time go?), and my first publication was a poem I’d written as a teenager in Seventeen Magazine. I was lucky enough to study with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute and Grace Paley at the Cummington Center for the Arts. My poetry books include Still Life with Buddy, Signs of Love, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard (novel-in-verse) and I Carry My Mother. From 2008 - 2010 I served as the poet laureate of Northampton, MA. www.lesleanewman.com
It's Time
My mother pale and frail and old
Her hands and feet so blue and cold
She looks at me with one dark eye
“It’s time,” she says, “for me to die.”
I know her life’s a bitter pill.
I know this has been coming. Still,
how on earth to say goodbye?
“It’s time,” she says, “for me to die.”
“It’s time,” she says, “for you to live.
You’ve given all you’ve got to give.
Just promise me that you won’t cry.
It’s time,” she says, “for me to die.”
She lays her hand upon my face.
My shattered heart begins to race.
My cheeks are anything but dry.
“It’s time,” she says, “for me to die.”
She turns from me and whispers, “Go,”
Her breath as soft and still as snow.
Her final words a whispered sigh.
“It’s time” she says, “for me to die.”
-originally appeared in I Carry My Mother (Headmistress Press, Sequim, WA 2015)
©2015 Lesléa Newman