Ode To Mrs. Miller

Issue 11

I did not know how brave she was--
Ninety-two and I, seventy less,
So young that old age
Was textbook stuff:
A fact of life,
But not mine.
 
I was alive and free
To stride the world,
A colossus of youth--
Whereas she had ate
Almost a century.
And all her friends
And all her family
Lay dead somewhere--
Except in her mind,
Still crisp, poignant
In its memories
Of a wealthy husband,
A daughter dead young.
Her own youth and beauty
Remaining lonely in a
Silver-framed photo.
 
She never complained,
This old lady--
Never once did I hear
Lamentations, a bewailing
For the richness of life:
The ripe fullness she once felt
As a wife, a mother, a woman
Of grace and beauty.
 
She lived alone
In a basement flat,
Barely five feet tall--
Yet I’ve never known
Any being braver--
Yet it is only now,
When I am become old,
I envy such courage.

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NOLO SEGUNDO, became a published poet in his 8th decade in over 210 literary journals in 17 countries. A retired teacher, he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and thrice for the Best of the Net. His reflect the awareness he gained when he had an NDE whilst nearly drowning in a Vermont river: that he has, or rather is a consciousness predating birth and surviving death, what poets since Plato have called the soul.

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