It seemed as a child the roles were
reversed, I became a mother
and she the child, flighty and nervous
and addicted to coffee, she was neurotic
and unable to care for her child.
Growing up I had to learn to fend for
myself, I resented the heavy responsibility.
She left us for days at a time. Not until
much later, did I realize when she had
shared through the years she had been
a victim of child abuse, and the damaging
effects it had done to her.
She did the best she
could have is my guess. She had
definite ideas and one of them was a
strange and mysterious one, which
I don’t really know where it had come
from, but she demanded she be
buried in a pauper’s grave, threatening
if we cremated her she would haunt
us!
A little poem I’ve written concerning
this strange request
On the north side of the
graveyard lot, lies a
pauper’s plot
saved for the indigent
and lost
only green moss grows on this
spot where the sun
is naught
the crow flies high in the
eastern sky and the
sparrow sits on her nest in
the tree top high
a creek flows below and the
grave rests on a knoll
to the left of this plot a man
hoes and digs for the
next coffer’s hole
not a flower lays upon
this mound nor sound of song is
sung
he sleeps hard and long till
the final day when he is
taken away
on the east side of the lot a
church steeple shines
it’s light driving the shadows away
both night and day
on the pauper’s plot
where he lay in a grave
he had not bought!
My mother insisted on being buried in a
pauper’s plot and of course we did not!
