My Mother Couldn’t Get A Joke

By John I. Blair

Although she lived to 93
My mother couldn’t get a joke.
While some folk
Get knocked silly,
When she was five
Falling from a horse
Had knocked her sober.

For hours she’d lain unconscious;
And though in time she woke,
The laughter wasn’t in her any more.

Oh, sometimes, when she heard
Her family guffawing,
Not to be unsociable she’d crack a grin;
But she wouldn’t understand.
And for nearly ninety years
She lived and loved
But never laughed.

Even at the last,
Faced with the biggest joke of all,
She didn’t see the humor.

Anticipating a response
To my demise
The same as hers,
I often wonder
If I should try a horse ride first
In hopes I’d find the laughter
She once lost.

©2005 John I. Blair