Author Information
Now She Rests
She lies on the bed; age has caught her now,
Not that it mattered anyhow.
She tried to sit up, but all her bones ached,
Arthritic fingers, how much more could she take?
Her hair was gray now, and thinning besides,
And deep, deep wrinkles lined her weary eyes.
Her hearing was lost some time ago,
And now total quietness is all she knows.
Just above the knee on her right thigh,
The pain hit again, and a trace of tears from her eyes
Oftentimes heat radiated her soul,
But the warmth didn’t reach hands so cold.
Finally she sits through such an effort,
To tell her stories is what she lived for.
Past times, the drought, and depression,
So many things, way too much to mention.
A hacking cough passes her lips,
And she tries to cover it with her bent fingertips.
She couldn’t stretch her fingers, and she talked with her hands,
But some unknown reason I could understand.
“Many, many years ago, in times of old,
The young men weren’t so bold.”
She shut her eyes, and her face wrinkled,
But when she opened them back I caught a glimpse of a twinkle.
She was going back, back in time,
Reviewing the chapters in her life.
The secrets, lost mysteries, treasures we fail to see,
“The good ole days,” is where she longed to be.
“You know, back in my day we worked from sun up to sunset,
Except for school and church, we had no rest.
But wasn’t much trouble neither, we had plenty to do,
Besides, you got took out behind the wood shed if you broke the rules.”
“The boy had to come to the parents if he wanted a date,
And honey you had best not come home late.
Folks was stricter back then they knew how to act,”
And as I listened I knew she wanted to go back.
“Did I ever tell you how I met your grand paw?
He was passing through, going to fight the war.
He was walking and he passed by the farm,
And I can tell you he sure turned on the charm.”
On and on she spoke, I’d heard it many times before,
But I loved to listen too her stories, she spoke of life, love, and war.
Many secrets she could tell, living history through her eyes,
Through hardships and destruction she survived.
Calloused hands tell the story many hours in the fields,
The long hard hours praying for a good yield.
She coughs one more time she’s short of breath,
Some other time she can finish her story, but now, she rests
