Ellen June Wright
And miles to go before I sleep
(after Robert Frost)
Mother is nocturnal. Moments
of freedom come late into the evening.
After everyone has gone to bed,
she finds the strength, at 99, to rise
and roam—knowing or not knowing
remembering or not remembering
the times she’s fallen, hit her head,
bruised her eye socket, but something
in her clouded mind pushes her to roam,
to spend hours between midnight
and sunrise searching as if lost in the woods—
no breadcrumbs to follow, no ravens to guide.
Ellen June Wright is an American poet with British and Caribbean roots. Her work has been published in Plume, Tar River, Missouri Review, Verse Daily and the North American Review. She’s a Cave Canem and Hurston/Wright alumna and has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She also hosts a weekly poetry workshop on Zoom.