My mother wakes slowly, her body
an expression of the stars. Outside
her window, an early autumn day begins,
and sun pours its strands of gold
into chrysanthemum and hollyhock
while she stretches into the new light
and the promise of ripened
apples. I wish the sky would smile on her
the way she would smile on a newborn,
but what my mother yearns for
is neither mother nor child. Years later
my heart will break when I read her journals,
learn that she dreamed of being kissed by
my father on a shadowed forest path, but he only
pointed out the native trees and kept walking.
–
Cathy Ann Kodra’s poetry has appeared in Literary Mama, Psaltery & Lyre, RHINO, Still: The Journal, The RavensPerch, Whale Road Review, and others. Her first full poetry collection, Under an Adirondack Moon, was released in October 2017 (Iris Press). She works as an independent editor in East Tennessee.