Poetry: Day 4

Today I challenge you to write a fourteener. Fourteeners can be have any number of lines, but each line should have fourteen syllables. Traditionally, each line consisted of seven iambic feet (i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, times seven), but non-iambic fourteeners also exist. The fourteener was popular in 16th and 17th century England, where it was particular common in ballads, but it also is the form in which “Casey at the Bat” is written. The form is versatile enough to encompass any subject matter, but as the example of “Casey at the Bat” shows us, it is particularly useful in narrative poetry, due to the long line and the step-like sense of progression created by the iambs.

My mother died in January four years ago now
my father's birthday marked the same day, strange coincidence?
I wish there was a phone to call the dead where they could (would?)
pick up and answer - one way Collect - What a priceless gift!
Tell her about yoga and teaching and kitty is sick
hearing her laugh, pain-free, and ask the questions I now hear:
How are you doing? What are you up to? How's things up there?
And at the end of the call from my mom we would then say:
I love you and I miss you so much, Goodbye mom, Goodbye!
Thank God I got to tell her the night she quietly left.

Children all over the Earth lose moms and dads but I just
think about my mom. I don't weep for every mom, just mine
Sitting, making dinner (I never tried the split pea soup)
Telling stories over again (I never wrote them down)
Annual summer trips to her childhood home where we laughed,
relaxed with her parents - Grandpa welcomed mom when she died
Grandma and I stayed behind to bleed, to cry, to go on
as those who have loved and lost and forgiven the world that
too young, too soon many generations of ancestors
Premature is always the response from those left behind.

Tomorrow is Easter and I will spend it with family
In my heart I will float back to Cindy Place as a child
Mom will call me to dinner and I'll race down the long hall
There she will be, the Easter ham, sparkling cider too
I'll not know what to do but sit, break bread and toast the Lord
that put mom on this Earth even if it weren't long enough,
but thankfully short enough for her to avoid pain, panic
Tears spill at the table, but I will laugh too as we say:
Thanks be for the time we had and the memories I'll save
together at the round table with mom eating dinner.