Sunday, January 21, 2024 “Healing” by Deborah Osborne
my friend told me how
for the last time, he brushed his
dying mother’s long
Cherokee hair
each brush stroke smoothing the sadness
into a sacred memory
I, too, feel the brush
in my hand
the slow brush stroke, quiet and gentle
now loud in
the hush of this room
it is said that, as a child
my grandmother
was cured of blindness
by Father Baker
and I dreamt
of walking in the cemetery
with my mother
by a golden pool
a healing place like Lourdes
but it was not time to heal
and my mother was
already dead
yet it was so good
to walk with her again
for the last time, he brushed his
dying mother’s long
Cherokee hair
each brush stroke smoothing the sadness
into a sacred memory
I, too, feel the brush
in my hand
the slow brush stroke, quiet and gentle
now loud in
the hush of this room
it is said that, as a child
my grandmother
was cured of blindness
by Father Baker
and I dreamt
of walking in the cemetery
with my mother
by a golden pool
a healing place like Lourdes
but it was not time to heal
and my mother was
already dead
yet it was so good
to walk with her again
About the Poet
Deborah Osborne has been writing poetry since she was eleven—for over fifty years. Her poetry has appeared on numerous occasions on the Buffalo News Poetry Page, in Artvoice, Impractical Cartography, River Poets Journal, Steel Bellow, and in Oberon Poetry Magazine.
She won the 1994 Just Buffalo Literary Center “Labor in Literature Award,” and the 2008 Just Buffalo Literary Center “Boomdays Poetry Award.”
This poem appears in her new full-length volume Luck Will Find You: Collected Poems, a compilation of her poetry written over the last 30 years. The collection is available on Amazon Books.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.