YA NEVER KNOW

For Open Link Night, week #93 at dVerse Poets Pub. 

Postings begin Tuesday at 3 PM EST

EDNA WAS A BIKER-GIRL!

 A TOY CAN TAKE YOU 

ANYWHERE

Picture age four, a little boy
to whom Santa brought a toy
fiddle. Word rhymed with
diddle, as in "Hey Diddle, Diddle
The Cat and His Fiddle...
cow jumped over the moon, and
dish ran away with the spoon..."

I positively hated the violin
Hated my mother--a sin--
which led to many years
of torture, tears and fears.

SKIP from age 4 to 75
Hardly a man is now alive...?*

In nursing home a violin plays--
and it is ME, some days!
Playing for the old folks,
conjuring maybe a memory.

Smallest old lady (Edna) in wheelchair bent
over, as if God might send for her
that very afternoon. Eyes closed, nothing
moved...soundless room...just we two
alone (with about 40 others!), me
on floor, kneeling so I might see her face
and she, restrained with a brace, still in
mode of sightlessness.

I said to The Spirit--"What shall I play?"
Floated out from my violin that day, a
favorite "Ave Maria" which would say
most honest truth known, to Edna,
new Friend, most smallest lady--who
opened her blues, squinted at me. 

As we "connected" I saw a tear--only one,
roll down beautiful age-pruned place
along that creek where nose meets face.
What Utter joy--HOLY JOY I felt, as
her joyful memory-tears followed the one...

Thank You, God the Father
and Thank You, my Mother
for Gifts you both gave me that day,
Gifts for me to now give away......

As nursing aide rolled her away, I felt something taken from me.
Several days later, she was in heaven with her real Sancta Marie.
A nurse had whispered,
"We wondered if she would ever again
look out from her head bent there...
whether might once more shed a tear."

LAGNIAPPE:

...and every now and then, finding myself in a dark alley of life
I remember that day
and ask Edna to pray
for me.
--steveroni

This happened several years ago at                              
Moorings Park, Naples Florida

*from Longfellow's
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere