memories

Tribute to the Memory of my Late, Great Mother  
Blanche Medorah Cunningham Bowen  
(1913 February 06-2020 July 14)  
 
“Motherhood:  All love begins and ends there.”—Robert Browning  
 
my mother passed this way  
a century and eleven years ago.  
memories cannot decay,  
although the rusts of time across them blow.  
she has no further cares,  
where once her heart heaved underneath the strain  
of sentiments and fears  
that rattled hard against her windowpane.  
 
my mother was the earth,  
fertile with an abundance of fierce love;  
she levied all her worth  
to swell man's common lot, his hopes improve.  
she gave herself away  
till there was nothing left of her to give;  
she found another way  
when there was no way left by which to live.  
 
my mother knew not, then,  
that february morn when she was born,  
the why and how and when  
and wherefore of the red rose and the thorn.  
but, not afraid to fly,  
she mounted up with lofty eagles' wings;  
and, not afraid to die,  
she zzzs beyond the snares of earthbound strings.  
 
the matriarch of selflessness, my mother  
a world of anguish healed, where stood no other.  
 
© Copyright 2024 February 05  
by Clyve A. Bowen♫