New Year
       

after calling our son & daughter
to wish them happy & good luck
we get to bed early but get
a phone call from my mother
who died in April she doesn't
say where she's calling from though
I can hear laughter in the background
and she says Uncle Frank is making
his famous Manhattans which are
she adds gratuitously as always
a lot better than I was ever able to make—
"one of his really puts you to sleep"—
    and I have to reply "Mom do you know
    that you never once so far as I can
    remember have told me 'I love you"'
    and she says rather sadly
    "You've always been somewhat of
    a fool; don't you remember how,
    that time you passed out at my birthday party,
    one of your cousins told you later
    I cried out 'My son, my only son!'?"

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Copyright © 2015 Ed Ochester All rights reserved
from Sugar Run Road
Autumn House Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission