Great Lady Descending
Three weeks before our son tells us she is our daughter
I have this dream:
I am standing at the bottom of a staircase and bowing like a court herald.
From that position I gesture with a flourish and announce:
The Great Lady is descending.
And there, at the top of the stairs, she pauses:
A woman dressed in white with a holly sprig tucked into her red sash.
Before that, I woke one morning, as I sometimes do, with a whole sentence in my head:
If you don’t know what she sounds like, don’t just say anything–
listen to the sound of her voice.
Now it strikes me that that those words, that image
Were sent from the future to the present to help me
So I could recognize the new woman who had already entered the room
So I could call her by the name she had already picked out.
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Carol Boston works in higher education and holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She grew up in the rural Midwest and now lives with her husband and aged cat in Silver Spring, Maryland. This is her first appearance in a poetry journal.
What a way for you, too, to enter the poetry community! A very nuanced, lovely and loving tale. Congratulations!
Fabulous
This poem left me gobsmacked – thank you Carol. What a beauty!