Sisters

I noticed when you came this time to visit
and we fell right into our age-old habit
of belly laugh and snicker,
and challenge and bicker,
that you, like me in these later years,
one-foot-it up and down the stairs.

It’s November, month of drizzle and sudden sun,
of a preponderance of birthdays of everyone
from our five-years-dead mother
to your ex-husband’s youngest brother.
Our lives seldom overlap – only when
one of us visits, and even then,

we are hard-pressed to recognize
the world as seen through the other’s eyes.
As we sip at our steaming mugs of ginger tea
I look out at the rainy autumn garden and see
the phlox flowers transliterated into starry seeds,
and you look out and see the weeds.

Liza McAlister Williams

If you have any comments on this poem,  Liza McAlister Williams   would be pleased to hear from you.