Pale Green Mourning
By Maureen Teresa McCarthy
Every morning
After my father died
My mother set one place
For herself
At the kitchen table.One pale green placemat
Cup and saucer
Knife and spoon
One small plate
The sugar bowl
And the butter dish.
One folded napkin.
After my father died
My mother set one place
For herself
At the kitchen table.One pale green placemat
Cup and saucer
Knife and spoon
One small plate
The sugar bowl
And the butter dish.
One folded napkin.
The cup and saucer are cream white
Banded with rosebuds
And pale green leaves.
The same pale green
As her placemat
The soft green of early spring
The pale green
Of a woman alone.
The cup and saucer are mine now.
The cup is filled with soft green ivy
And sits on the kitchen windowsill.
Every morning
I pour my coffee into
One tall white mug
And carry it back to my bed.
Maureen Teresa McCarthy is a central New York native who left for 10 years to live in California. She received a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from San Francisco State University and subsequently worked at Harcourt Brace. After traveling through Europe and Mexico, she returned to the Finger Lakes and completed her Master of Arts in American Literature at Syracuse University. She taught Composition and Basic Writing at various community colleges while raising two sons. She published the essay, “Grand Voyager,” in At Grandmother’s Table: Women Write about Food, Life and the Enduring Bond between Grandmothers and Granddaughters (Fairview Press, 2001) and “In Our Mothers’ Gardens” in That Great Sanity (University of Michigan Press, 1995). She has completed a Civil War novel (as yet unpublished) and is a lifelong poetry writer.