I never grew out of cookies

and milk

I grew in.

Someone reflective,

not out loud.

Even behind the smoke,

I saw wheels turn and wondered

where had you gone?

Perhaps it was to the oceans of your youth,

a brave island against the rough Atlantic

where the Portuguese language carves out its own beauty,

through a faith and knitted family.

Your arms glide through the pool

like you sliced tomatoes into salad,

how light cut through the grape vine pergola.

That trip we took together to the Azores

opened my eyes to the backbone you were

a set of vertebrae to hold a family strong.

A woman with many joys taken

at all hours after siesta, with coffee

and cake in the midnight talking hours.

Laughter that woke me with a smile.

I knew then what I realize now

like the smoke we fade.

Dissipate into the atmosphere

touching brief lives,

impart advice.

Grace that layers beneath –

a foundation on which I stand

wavering in this mourning.

In loving memory of Arminda Agusto, our Vovó.

Serena M. Agusto-Cox, a Suffolk University graduate, writes more vigorously than she did in her college poetry seminars. Her day job continues to feed the starving artist, and her poems can be read in Beginnings Magazine, LYNX, Muse Apprentice Guild, The Harrow, Poems Niederngasse, Avocet, Pedestal Magazine, and Mothers Always Write, among others.  An essay also appears in H.L. Hix’s Made Priceless and at Modern Creative Life, as does a Q&A on book marketing through blogs in Midge Raymond’s Everyday Book Marketing.  She also runs the book review blog, Savvy Verse & Wit , and is the founder of Poetic Book Tours.

Image by Elaine from Baltimore, MD – Trellis, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21357766