Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MOTHER AND SON, by KAREN SWENSON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MOTHER AND SON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Still, in the stale cigarette smell
Last Line: Drift separately into dawn.
Subject(s): Children; Memory; Mothers & Sons; Parents; Childhood; Parenthood


Still, in the stale cigarette smell
of motel rooms, I wake
if a child coughs next door, my palms
sweaty with impotent responsibility.
Tonight, home for a weekend,
you cough in the next room
sever my dreams and wake me
to frayed ends of the loosed cord.

3 AM.
Turn on the light.
Read.

Seeing the light beneath my door
you wander in to sit on the end of the bed
and we are held an hour
in the lamp's circle
making a reef knot of our loose ends
until we slip from each other again
and, the light turned out,
drift separately into dawn.





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