POEM
The Red Portrait
Last night she came to me, my mother, dead:
but as she was in the photo, that last Christmas,
wearing a red dress, and her lipstick was red
(I wonder if that means she lives in hell),
and I saw again that she was beautiful,
the same high forehead I have, the same wide brow,
and just my age, forty-nine; and now I was
talking fast, because I knew I had no time,
and I told her I loved her, I told her how her life
had informed mine, and I begged her to come
to me again, to meet my children, my wife.
I said to her—My work, see what I have made,
I have tried to do what you did not live to do.
But she smiled at me and began to fade.
Source: Poetry (March 2008).
This poem originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Poetry.
BUY THIS ISSUE »
Karl Kirchwey is the author of five books of poems, most recently The Happiness of This . . . MORE »
