Read Poem: The Saint Kathleen my Mum by Patricia Poulos

As the sun was rising at 6.15am
on the twenty-second day of December 2017,
this fair beauty of the north and
mother of seven living children
took her last breath.
The laughing of her favourite bird
the Kookaburra
was heralding in a new dawn
to the sweet smell of Gardenia
and the passing
of a Saint-who-did-no-harm.
With love and devotion
it would be her eldest
at her side to the end
the rest busy,
arranging her funeral
whilst she was still fighting to live.
With her hand on the chest of this Saint
the eldest felt the warmth of her body
cool, on the leaving of her soul.
She never complained,
this country-grown lass whose endurance
equalled that of a Trojan even,
when exploited by her own children.
Born the eldest of five
she carried her heavy burden lightly
as she laboured
to maintain her parents’ household
her father absent,