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Am I the Elderly?
Karen Paul Holmes
The coronavirus is deadly for the elderly.
- U.S. News
The elderly may now partake of communion without going to confession.
- St. Peter Orthodox Church announcement, 2002
Saturday night vespers. Mother kneels
at the feet of Father Philip, who whispers
to his gold-threaded stole shrouding her head,
Elva, did you see the bulletin,
you don’t have to do this anymore.
She, age 82 with elfin cropped hair, replies,
But I thought that was for the elderly.
These years later, I get it.
I see and feel this body, cannot call it old.
In Mother’s kitchen, I used to chop
onions for her lamb munjas. Onions remain
onions through and through, not like
the body’s legion of layers.
For as long as I’ve known, I’ve felt a kernel—
The inner part of a seed or grain,
its center or essence,
the core within this particular husk
for the time being.
I know that’s what Mother felt too.
Do you feel yours?
Its ember. Its nucleus spin:
A gyroscope. A mother and child twirling.
about the writer
Karen Paul Holmes has two poetry collections, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin,
2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Her poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac and Tracy K. Smith’s The Slowdown. Publications include Diode, Valparaiso Review, Lascaux Review, and Prairie Schooner. To support fellow writers, she founded and hosts the Side Door Poets.