« Previous Next »

Empty Nest

by Peter Moltoni

She keeps his pj’s, socks and boardies pressed;
she waters her begonias in the rain;
she mops and vacuums daily to the strain
of Willie’s Always On My Mind. The nest
is swept and kept in ready state. She’s blessed
with presenile dementia and the chain
of memory is frail, her failing brain
a sorry consolation. She’s at rest.
My memory is raw: the spread of day-
lilies overshadowed by the cast
of evening, crushed beneath us where we knelt;
given to decorate a moment, wilt
then die. We tombed our future with his past
and trudged the endless mile from where he lay.


Peter Moltoni has accumulated over 60 poetry awards and recognitions at various levels in national poetry competitions. His work has appeared in Galloping On, The Finishing Post, Free XpresSion, Metverse Muse, Inside Out, the ezines Worm and Ozpoet’s Treasury, and various other competition-associated publications, but failed to measure up with his first venture into Nemerov territory in 2010.

See links to all sonnets by this author


Pat Jones
Published 23 August 2011