Yes, I also cannot reach the top shelves anymore and I have a hump on my back like my Grandmama. We both have diabetes too and hearing loss. My mother skipped these illnesses, but died of cancer since she liked alcohol and cigarettes. Everyone loved her generosity and christian faith. She was loyal to my father too.
My heart matters to all in my family. My height, not so much!
Jeanne in the mountains
Shrinking as they rise, the…
by Len Roberts
constellations
grow so much smaller late at night
when I walk softly out of the house,
trying not to wake anyone up,
sitting here on the blue porch
to see Cassiopeia the size of a book- end,
Draco the Dragon smaller than
a milksnake,
realizing again I am shrinking
the picture taken last month in which
my son
rises above my head
so much like the one
taken of me and my father as we stood
in front of St. Bernard’s,
my graduation diploma in my folded hands,
his pockmarked face looking into my neck,
my padded shoulders level with his bloodshot
eyes,
and I know the bells were ringing
and the people all around us were laughing and
loudly talking,
that cars swished by in the afternoon sun
but I just looked down on my father’s waved hair,
smelled the Schaefer’s on his dark breath,
refusing to shake his hand which even now
holds itself out, twenty-three years after
his death,
into this clear-night December Pennsylvania air.
“Shrinking as they rise, the…” by Len Roberts, from Counting the Black Angels. © The University of Illinois Press, 1994. Reprinted with permission
Poetry Almanac Friday 12/2/22
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 