Mythopoetry Scholar

Matter & Beauty


Dreaming In Her Old Age
-Deanna McKinstry-Edwards

Mother's asleep by the window,
dreaming
in her old age.

White faced owls
watch her,
drinking the language of unshakeable night,
their songs twisting in the wind.

Chilling the garden and sickle
moon, up on the hill
autumn ancestors
sharpen their memories
on pine breath and apples.

When you're old, sometimes
you forget to be old.
You're a billowing girl
drenched in skins of gold
riding a wild mare,
arriving, arriving...capturing things
on a map,
your nimble fingers stained with dawn.

But who will believe
how young you still are?

Then one day you're a leaf dressed in jewels
on the blossoming air of an unknown shore.

It all depends...
on the unseen hands and winds
which laid down their lives for you,
and those apples spoiling
under the apple tree into love's grassy wine.
It all depends, I suppose,
on how much you drink,
and how deep.


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