Look In Here

One more for National Poetry Month. This one is mine. I wrote it for Poetry Month. Enjoy!


I tell my children:

If you want to know me, look in here.
There will be no other record after I'm gone.
These slim cardboard volumes are what I leave in place of ashes;

these and the songs I sang to you
at bedtime or while stirring vegetable soup
late at night with the first autumn cold snap.

You will not find me bound in tidy brown leather,
gold leaf lettering the cover; or embellished with
stickers on acid free paper.

I will be faded to almost nothing where I wrote in pencil.

When you read, you may hear my alto, perhaps,
remember the way my hands turned pages.
You may discover a blossom pressed where it fell

unknown from the wisteria one summer.
Remember how it grew in braids up the ancient Cedar
by the corner of the house; how in early morning

I sat beneath walnut trees, writing about
robins digging worms in rain-soaked soil
or a crescent moon at daybreak?

If you look, you will find me recalling a certain sunset,
my daughter's golden hair, her little sister tasting
ocean sand, the smell of my son when he was seven.

You will find me here, quiet in the hammock,
the apple I was eating fallen to the ground unfinished.

Melody Newey © 2009