Ed Ruzicka Verse-Virtual 2017 October

October 2017

I grew up in a Catholic family in Illinois and now live in very Catholic south Louisiana, These are two poems about my mother who was a strong woman and probably the best Catholic I have ever known. My faith is a little harder to set into a frame but is guided by hers as I hope these poems show. edrpoet.com

My mother Helen Marie Ruzicka (retired teacher)
with my oldest daughter Helen Miriam Ruzicka who is now a teacher,

Elegy For Taking the Time

I

Every December my sister boxed us out of the living room.
With a deft patience we couldn't manage, she disentangled
strands of aluminum stored on cardboard year to year and
drug out in beat up boxes from under slanting attic roof boards.

Clare, four-eyes Clare, carefully teased out each matted
hair of tinsel, brought it to light. Single slips of silver
between her fingers she’d drape them, strand by strand,
over needles until our tree shimmered in a town

where Oldsmobiles and Studebakers prowled
over icy pavement to see how other clap-board
homes had framed their trees in front of windows.
Light lay reflected on lawns of snow.

II

My mother drove into the city to teach, pulled weeds,
planted flower beds, whacked down rhubarb stalks,
baked pies, roasted beef, brought magazines and
chocolates to shut-ins, hauled me to the orthodontist
and Clare to baton practice, had a button box,
served on numerous Parish committees

and liked to steep Lipton. She’d sit at the kitchen table,
sip, look out windows where the future of three sons,
two daughters was imagined in raveled strands
of fret and hope. Where twin rows of evergreen and pine
planted by her brother after he got out of the navy loomed.

Boughs weighted by snow come winter, boughs
shaken by wind come spring. Where snatches
from last week’s sermon or one she heard when
she was young, came back with clarity and relevance.
Where a cardinal might land on a branch of box elder,
stay. Bird and woman together, eyes keenly bright.

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