Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

"Birthday Card to My Mother" ~ Philip Appleman


The toughness indoor people have:

  the will

to brave confusion in

mohair sofas, crocheted doilies - challenging

in every tidy corner some

bit of the outdoor drift and sag;

  the tenacity

in forty quarts of cherries up for winter,

gallon churns of sherbet at

family reunions,

fifty thousands suppers cleared away;

  the tempering

of rent-men at the front door, hanging on,

light bills overdue,

sons off to war or buried, daughters

taking on the names of strangers.

 

You have come through

the years of wheelchairs, loneliness -

a generation of pain

knotting the joints like ancient apple trees;

you always knew this was no world to be weak in:

where best friends wither to old

phone numbers in far-off towns;

where the sting of children is always

sharper than serpents' teeth; where

love itself goes shifting

and slipping away to shadows.

 

You have survived it all,

come through wreckage and triumph hard

at the center but spreading

gentleness around you - nowhere

by your bright hearth has the dust

of bitterness lain unswept;

today, thinking back, thinking ahead

to other birthdays, I

lean upon your courage

and sign this card, as always,

with love.