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My Mother's Best Friend
She carried a piece of blue sky in her pocket
and would shake it out at the nearest rumble
of storm, it's lace border wisping away
into mists of cloud, gathering and piling
up and up into thick cumulus that caught the sun
and shone with a fierce white brightness.
We gathered around her kitchen table, our open hearth,
she the warm fire burning low in the grate.
Children of a home built on a cracked foundation
we shivered in the drafts that found us
in the furthest corners of an empty house.
But with her we revived, free to step out gingerly,
leave a morsel of complaint on the table
she would speedily whisk away with her sky of kerchief,
the air again spring-like, a flutter of flute heard somewhere,
promising much.
Janet Butler's most recent Chapbook, Upheaval, which was one of three winners in the Red Ochre Press Chapbook contest for 2012. She is moderator of the monthly Poetry and Prose at the Blue Danube in Alameda, a meetup for local literati. She loves watercolor painting as much as writing poetry, and will have a solo-show this May at Spritzer's Cafe, also in Alameda.
Email: Janet Butler
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