Rapture

(Sonnet #1)

On a Saturday morning in Palm Beach,
middle-aged poets read stanzas of grief.
Now I know it will always be too soon
for my mother to die.  It will happen
too slow, if not sudden.  She might forget
me first, might not see her own face in mine
anymore, might sniff chamomile teabags
and not remember the evening we sat
at the dining room table, her bible
open to its index, finger pacing
over thin pages to find the perfect
verse to help me understand that vengeance–
against boys who didn’t call– was the Lord’s.
How we laughed, that day, at the wrath of God!

Previously published by “Conte: A Journal of Narrative Writing”