Alice Friman: All for the Love of You      

On the day Daisy just plain

died, Kenneth Haydon of Benton

“left earth to shake hands with Jesus”

and La’Kesha Walker, youngest

of six, “passed through the gates

of Heaven.” Whether angels sang

or if there were hugs, backslapping,

or kisses on both cheeks à la française,

I don’t know, but I tell you,

it was a great day here on Earth

for the Paradise Casket Company,

who recorded record profits from all

that fancy travel going on. But Daisy,

she went sterling, unadulterated, her son

holding her hand and singing her out.

The song, from America’s old songbook,

for the oldest love story in the world.

Mother and child. Daisy and son.

Never mind his sixty years and her ninety-four.

Never mind the platitudes about a long life

well lived. It was mother and son

all over again. Michaelangelo’s Pietà

repeated, and if he could, gray hair, PhD

and all, he’d have crawled into the cold marble

of her lap if only to be close to the womb

he’d come from, that day sixty years ago

when the two of them, laboring all night,

rode the high hills of pain, she behind,

he in front, head down and coming,

the way he is now—pedaling hard

into that first cold slap of mourning.

—

Copyright 2016 Alice Friman. First published in Prairie Schooner. Republished by permission of the author.