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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxj!mhuxl!mhuxm!cjc
From: cjc@mhuxm.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: Life
Message-ID: <263@mhuxm.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Aug-83 12:22:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxm.263
Posted: Tue Aug  9 12:22:21 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Aug-83 22:40:10 EDT
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 52

This poem tugged at my heart the first time I read it, and I think
it is worth sharing.  It is about my mother-in-law.  You say she
must be a special person for someone to write a poem about her,
well, she is.  It is about her life:  born and raised on a farm in
Vermont, wed her sweetheart from a neighboring farm at 19, and lost
him to leukemia at 20.  She left for the big city to get over her
loss and met my husband's father.  The rest is history......
Your mother worked real hard
	when she was just a child
The stories that she tells are
	very seldom wild
She has tended, cleaned and scrubbed
	in many other homes
And all of this she did then
	cleaning up her own
Sometimes she'd get to do
	a thing she really liked
With pride you cannot miss
	she tells of rides by bike
Along the country roads up hill
	and down through dale
The climbs and length of which
	would tend to make us pale
Beyond the road the swimming hole
	her summer place
So it chilled the bones
	those memories retrace
I've felt the water, clear, cold
	lightly colored blue
I do not doubt her body
	turned that color, too
She met and loved and lost
	both in swift occasion
Her grief was strong and it
	rent her whole persuasion
First school then work at
	Pan Am Communications
That's where we began our
	very first flirtations
Through a Dutch door it was
	I'd see her smiling face
We fell in love and wed
	our lives you now embrace
Then Mom swelled with more than pride
	Robin was alive
Lots of care and loving there
	soon the count was five
Its been great and lots of fun
	lots of trouble too
Here she is please love her, do
		Everlastingly your husband
	she's everything to you