LINES FOR REX ON THE DAY OF HIS MOTHER'S FUNERAL

 

LINES FOR REX ON THE DAY OF HIS MOTHER’S FUNERAL

                        P.S. Before the poem: Love to you and Terri, Rex.

                        Christ Love reaching us today in Yakima. Thanks. Jim

Looking for a book of poems

your mother would like to find

on the coffee table, Rex.

Patricia Smith’s deep search

for voices never heard—Smith

found discarded faces

in 19^th Century photographs

and resurrected the people.

She wrote the poems.

Unshuttered what was shuttered.

I think your Mom would approve,

seeing them Sunday dressed

at their best in your living room,

listening to their stories

after Wednesday Prayer meeting

at Holy Temple. Looking for more

than your Mom’s approval--

but looking for that, too,

Mrs. Hazel B. DeLoney’s

story, formidable, goes before her,

from 1931, 94 years,

elder, supervisor,

goes before, and with, ...but

there’s so much more—your

sweet mother’s wide arms

can reach those unshuttered faces

knowing their clothes, knowing

where Patricia Smith’s poems hit home.

Your mother knows her son,

knows all her children, and knowing

her son—you, Rex—perhaps even

your Mom takes a step back in wonder

seeing how faces in your paintings

keep us alive, vital, going forward.

Jim Bodeen

20 December 2025