Category Archives: NAPOWRIMO

~

When she was thinking, seeking clarity

She softly squinted her brown eyes

like she was far away from the moment

Taking her right hand, lifting it to her nose

placing the top side of her pointy finger

beneath her nose in repose.

With her middle finger in an

exaggerated caress, steadily,

at times vigorously, or very slowly,

she would pet the bridge of her nose

down and past the soft bulb of it

in an easy steady slide, meeting

with a flick of her finger at the end then

tapping the back of her index finger.

Repeating this motion many times

in a variety of rhythmic beats even

when clarity seemed to have found her.

~

It was a charming and odd way to ponder

to this child’s mind even into adulthood,

seeking the deeper meaning of the ways of life,

if that was indeed what she was doing.

It was necessary to copy it, to see

what it felt like to be like her, to do it.

Was there magic in it, and did clarity

actually knock on her mind and give it?

I found it comforting to do it, relaxing.

Practicing the various ways of the

caress, the pet, the quick and slow

slides down my nose with that

generous flick at the end.

~

Decades passed and it became an artifact

of my mother that I thought I had forgotten.

Put it away in my heart with her death and

the many other quirks and foible treasures

to be pulled up and out in remembrance.

And this one idiosyncrasy brought to

my attention by a loved one.

“You’re just like you mother.

That nose thing she did.

How she pets it when she was sitting

quietly thinking,  you do that too”.

~

~

jeanne adwani@copyright april 2021