Island Writers Network

Hilton Head Island Writers and Their Books

IWN Anthology Poem: ‘Her Room’

Written By: Admin - Nov• 17•15

Fred Bassett_IWNThis excerpt from the latest IWN anthology, Time and Tide, is the poem, “Her Room,” by Fred Bassett. But first we share this background from the author on the poem’s inspiration:

After we moved to Hilton Head Island in August of 1988, it dawned on me as my birthday approached that I should visit my mother, who now lived by herself only three hours away, and celebrate her life for giving me life. So I called her to tell her I was coming, by myself, on my birthday to take her to lunch, just the two of us…

Her Room

She sits alone in the big chair,
admiring the cut flowers by the window.
It was her first-born son’s birthday,
and he had driven three hours
to celebrate with gifts for her.
The mother should be the focus
of one’s birthday, he would tell her.
She picks up the new teddy bear,
the first she could call her own,
and holds it like it was a baby.

Drifting across the years, she recalls
the morning her water broke.
How young and innocent she was.
How hope had withered to despair
during the long, difficult labor
in that old farm house back in Alabama.
A travail she had never spoken about,
although her sister had blabbed it to him.
But she could not contain within herself
the anguish of her darkest day.
How she woke that morning to find
her beloved husband dead in their bed.
Yet her world kept turning,
shadowed with both joy and sorrow.

The old family clock strikes five.
She had expected him to call by now.
Surely he was safely home with his family.
She turns to the opposite wall
where the late sun, in fair weather,
always works some shifting spell.
And there are the shadows of her flowers.

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One Comment

  1. Such a beautiful tribute to our fragile lives and relationships. And their innate beauty.