On 55 years (4/13/94)

A half a century
   and a quarter score
 have aged
     a piano-teaching
        twelve year old
     in a town of thirty-five
  - my mother

How to measure
     a woman's legacy?
  2 offspring
  3 husbands
  2 pigtails
 and one career.

  To study her trail
 Joan Marie Hall
        esquire
leaves one with
     abogada paperweights
     camp-fashioned crafts
     supreme court souvenirs
     travelogues of foreign feasts
and photographs
     of a blonde woman
        in a red stetson
          smiling broadly
     with important men.

A reoccuring theme -
     profound respect
     and undying admiration
  fostered unwittingly
      by integrity
        discipline
        hard work
      by Joan Hall.

And now
13 April arrives
           again
 And whether a
     counting is in order:
  23 for Colin
  19 for Justin
  15 for Wes
  a few for Rod
Jenner and Block
     can both lay claim to 29
while George has
   shared five -

these next 55 are
   her own.
- J. Hall

Mom | poetry | life |

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