Una Visita Con Mama (A Visit with Mama)
We walk the rocky shore
and you lean heavily on me,
Mother, bruising my balky arm --
muttering "Ay, Hijo!";
a few steps and, breathless,
we are both exhausted.
Your once-brown eyes, gone gray,
are like concentric rings
rippling from a random stone
thrown into a polluted pond
in winter: eyes as flat
as the latex paint that
coats a cheerless rented room.
Cataracts circle your lenses;
they have a ruptured look --
purple, jellied -- like the eyes
of a dead fish, which I poke,
perversely fascinated.
It is puffed and rotten.
Your eyes are puffed, too, red-rimmed,
moist with tears that brim over
though you try to blink them back.
That you love me and I you,
and that we wish to extend
our time together, is clear --
as clear as the black water
in the pond, as clear as your
cataract-clouded eyes,
as clear as my conscience
when I drop you at the Home,
cleverly inventing an important
meeting, to which I hastily fly.
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 1 View
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKKLMNOPFQRSTUVWSAOXYZ1 |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 886 |
Words | 169 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 32 |
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"Una Visita Con Mama (A Visit with Mama)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/89758/una-visita-con-mama-(a-visit-with-mama)>.
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