Still Life with Watermelon and Grapes
Onnyx Bei
Proverbs 20:4
“The sluggard does not plow in the autumn;
he will seek at harvest and have nothing.”
I curl up in my favorite chair
and watch the full moon rise
until she hides behind the city walls.
The clock ticks in my head because
I know you’ll soon be home and I haven’t
cut the watermelon or washed the grapes.
I’d like to moon-bathe in stillness,
but I hear my mother’s voice:
time is not for sale, and the watermelon and grapes
will not cut and wash themselves.
So I get up from my moonlit nook
before you come home to find me
wondering where the time went,
remembering my mother
who worked too much for me to care
too little, who quoted Proverbs and added:
you give me more gray hair each day.
Now the gray on my head reminds me
of the sacrifices she made, while I cut
the watermelon and wash the grapes.
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