Decision
For Swen

There’s a moment for deciding.

She’s charming company, calm, concerned;
hair gaily brushed, neither wild
nor formal. She dandles someone’s grandchild,
inventing games (hide the spoon;
where’s Swen?). She tells little tales,
gentle anecdotes, quotations, jokes.
She eats daintily: appreciative,
discriminating, reminiscing about
years of cookery, the café, recipes
absorbed from her travels.
She graces the table.

The same recipe, the same little laugh,
the same charm, five minutes later;
the anecdotes vary — the countries,
the people, which daughter was with her.
Still the calm, the concern, still
the raunchy twinkle as she remembers
husband number two, or three.
The same recipe, the same laugh, again,
as fresh and as delicate as the last time.

Only: she knows when to glance away
as the twinkle gets watery; she knows
when the stories run askew; she knows
where the café was, but misses the name,
the city, the country; still the old skill,
the diplomatic elisions, the disguising.
She knows the grace, the charm will slip;
she knows enough to wish away the burden,
the loss, the slow mourning of her self.
In her mind she hugs the last autonomy;
she knows how to end the withering within,

how to seize the moment.


John Baylis Post, a friend from Ireland