Today's poem is by Rosanna Young Oh

The Woman with Leaves for Hands
       

Nowadays, my father's mind comes and goes as the wind.

During last night's rain, he watched the maple leaves turning
from beneath the eaves and thought my mother was passing through.

All night, the leaves turned, weaving themselves into arms,
weaving until the woman he once loved and the tree, shaking
before him, were one. He named her name, then waited.

He still believes in the silk of her voice.
"It comes and goes as the wind," he said, that characterful wind.

What should I have done? It was not the foggy cold
I was afraid of, nor the strangers staring at him from the road.

No. It was the mind repeating itself out of hope—
a mind that inhabits the same metaphor over and over,
populating the earth with talking winds and talking trees.

In my mind tonight, my mother lies below the grass,
too tired to speak. Her limbs are not maple. They do not move at all.

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Copyright © 2023 Rosanna Young Oh All rights reserved
from The Corrected Version
Diode Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission