Poetry by Lynn Tait

Cindy Shebley CC




As My Mother Lay Dying        

I was brick and mortar.
Immovable.
The give and take like a swing--
its once soft-shelled seat aged into hardwood,
the chains fused tight—rough and rusted.

I eroded and broke away--
a granite coastline calving
into the sea. I was not kind.

Which childhood memory felt
the sorrow of betrayal the most, as trust fell
apart in my hands?

In my own flash flood of motherhood tides pulled
me away from her salt and rock.

I swam back to a different shoreline, found
bodies of warm water calling my name, dove
into a lake of storytelling and song, swam
through sloppy waves of tears and laughter

no longer drowning in isolation, or choking
on the heartache of my own childhood.

I knew love. I was kind.
No longer just a daughter but wife and mother.
And I shone.

Slipping out of her grasp broke
her into pieces. Hardtack memories crumbled--
and as the grit of time laboured on,

watched her death clock as if waiting
for the final night-shift at a dead-end job--
relieved when the final whistle blew.
​



Lynn Tait is a poet/photographer residing in Sarnia, ON., land of the Aamjiwnaang First Nations. She is the author of You Break It You Buy It (Guernica Editions 2023) available in Canada, the US and the UK. Poems have been published in Prairie Fire, FreeFall, Windsor Review, Vallum, CV 2, Literary Review of Canada, Anti-Heroin Chic, Muleskinner, Up the Staircase Quarterly and in over 100 North American anthologies. She’s a member of The Ontario Poetry Society, the League of Canadian Poets, The Writers Union of Canada and Not The Rodeo Poets.



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