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Am I the Elderly?

Karen Paul Holmes

The coronavirus is deadly for the elderly.

- U.S. News

The elderly may now partake of communion without going to confession.

- St. Peter Orthodox Church announcement, 2002 

Saturday night vespers. Mother kneels

at the feet of Father Philip, who whispers

to his gold-threaded stole shrouding her head, 

Elva, did you see the bulletin,

you don’t have to do this anymore. 

She, age 82 with elfin cropped hair, replies, 

But I thought that was for the elderly. 

These years later, I get it. 

I see and feel this body, cannot call it old.

In Mother’s kitchen, I used to chop

onions for her lamb munjas. Onions remain

onions through and through, not like

the body’s legion of layers.  

For as long as I’ve known, I’ve felt a kernel—

The inner part of a seed or grain,   

its center or essence,

the core within this particular husk

for the time being. 

I know that’s what Mother felt too.

Do you feel yours?

Its ember. Its nucleus spin:

A gyroscope. A mother and child twirling.  

about the writer

Karen Paul Holmes has two poetry collections, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin,

2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Her poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac and Tracy K. Smith’s The Slowdown. Publications include Diode, Valparaiso Review, Lascaux Review, and Prairie Schooner. To support fellow writers, she founded and hosts the Side Door Poets.