My parents both had January birthdays. Many years since their passings, yet I am aware of their love in a simple way. My mother lived many years beyond my father’s death. She volunteered at a nursing home and taught English at a church to people new to our country. My father was a veteran and they were both teachers.

Taking turns
Letting each other go
Only to learn again
How love grows,
Mother

love for you
became her care
until she joined you there
grief gives way to fields and wind
and now I hear your voice again

My poems were published in Bell’s Letters.

Images: wpclipart

Ellen Grace Olinger