Waltzing With Eggs
Jane Yolen
​
They are tentative old friends,
learning to waltz past
their individual mournings.

After a breakfast of sorrow
his arm around her waist,
not at all like his late wife's,

Her hand on his shoulder,
she remembers another,
broader, softer.

They have omelets and coffee.
The dance feels a bit
like waltzing on eggs:

Part careful practice,
part messy problems,
part protein for a new life.



Immacular Conception
 
Her eyes dimming
faster than the shots can help,
she turns to her childhood,
those memories still bright.

She cannot read the words
She has typed on the page,
Or see the cat before tripping
over its dark back.

But she can recall the light
of  the prairie where
her remarkable first years
are captured in lucent prose,

She who can no longer see
her own reflection in the mirror,
or the smile on her youngest
grandchild’s face.


How My father Won the War
 
He came home a hero
arm in a sling,
told me he'd won the war
singlehandedly,
which made sense,
as that one looked mangled
from the buzz bombs.
Every time a fly buzzed
near me that soft summer,
or a bee hummed to its hive,
I winced, waiting for an explosion.
 
Yet, once we were back 
in New York City
he could throw any ball,
fly a kite with either hand.
It was as if we'd never waited
three years down south for his return, 
never lived outside the realm 
of his casual lies. 
My mother was done
with his stories by then,
but I was still eager
to believe them.
It was the one thing 
​I could do best in his eyes.
 
Only years later
did I truly know him,
after mother' s cancer
fierce in it energy,
buzzing along the ley lines
of her lungs,
became the engine 
of her escape,
and mine.







​

About the Author: 
Jane Yolen's 370th book was published this year, including a new collection of adult poems, and a verse novel for Young Adults. She has had poetry in many literary journals, sf magazines, anthologies. Her most recent novel, MAPPING THE BONES, stars a young poet (and some of his poems.)

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