Tomorrow she’d be
one hundred two.
Feels like a number from another language
now.
She’s been gone since I was twenty-one.
I’m fifty-nine.
Most of my life
happened after she left the room.
I always despised math.
She was an English teacher.
Books stacked in rooms
like they were part
of the furniture.
T.S. Eliot. Frost. Names said
like they had weight.
I didn’t understand it then.
I do now, a little too late
for conversation.
I became a writer anyway.
Books out in the world,
a few of them.
She would’ve read them carefully.
Marked lines.
Probably told me where I was being dishonest.
Back then I wasn’t writing.
I was disappearing
in other directions.
Now I don’t drink.
The house stays standing.
That’s its own kind of literature.
We live in a lake town.
Quiet mornings.
Books on shelves again,
not just scattered.
Cats moving through rooms
like they belong there more
than I do.
I keep thinking she’d understand this place.
The steadiness.
The lack of chaos.
The way nothing has to be survived anymore
just to exist.
She used to take us to Lake Okoboji.
Lean-tos in the heat.
Arnold’s Park lights shaking
over the water.
Everything louder then, even silence.
It’s almost July Fourth again.
Carnival coming back to the lake.
Same noise, same lights,
same water underneath it all.
Different town.
I wish she could see it.
Not to approve of me.
Just to know I didn’t keep
burning everything down.
And maybe we’d finally have
that conversation
we never had time for.
-
Author:
Thomas W Case (Pseudonym) (
Online) - Published: June 28th, 2026 08:11
- Comment from author about the poem: My book, Aluminum Cowboys: Poems and Short Stories, is available on Kindle Unlimited.
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 5
Online)
Comments2
Opportunities lost, time past, regret all come through in this poem of youth's naivete to grown regret. Another well told story of development that ends in the now that is as vivid as life itself. Well done Thomas
Thank you, my friend.
My pleasure
I believe you just honoured your mother, which holds a promise.
For lack of brain cells, I am thinking about the apple not falling far from the tree: the nicest way...
Thanks
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