April is National Poetry Month! I’ve dug down deep for this one, written for my Mom at least 30 years ago when she was the age that I am now. 

For My Mother and Other Collectors of Strays
 
I want you to contradict me.
When I shiver in my cavernous apartment
complaining that autumn has never been so rainy,
winter has never been so cold;
I want you to contradict me
to discern a cycle
to show me a pattern.
Instead you give me your past
like a brightly colored
patchwork quilt.
 
Why can’t you 
pull together
the threads
of your six decades
and offer them to me
like a panoramic tapestry
where land, sea, and sky
are neat, separate, and distinct.
 
Please forgive me my impatience.
 
I still call myself young
though I near an age
when youth cannot
be blamed for foolish ambition.
 
Still I do know 
that your outstretched palm
contains ridges and furrows
that offer refuge
to yellow and gray cats
mongrel dogs
long-tailed possums.
I too call our time together
a sanctuary:
evenings of minted tea
dogeared novels
tales of European history.
 
You give easily, freely
though you wordlessly
ask one condition:  
that I and my generation
renounce complacency.
For how can one be complacent
when there is a stray cat
who needs a warm basket
to curl up in?

Photo by Roberto H on Unsplash