Saturday Night Polka By Mary Ray Goehring

After My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke

With my dad it was a polka

Saturday nights to Lawrence Welk.

My mother,

who played accordion,

loved that show

almost as much as Bonanza.

I don’t remember her dancing,

there in the living room,

but us kids waited in line

to stand on his feet

hop side to side

a one and a two.

The smell of Blatz on his breath

irrelevant

though we knew it sometimes made him crazy.

He was laughing now.

Playing.

Life was good.

              

Mary Ray Goehring spends her time migrating between her prairie in Central Wisconsin

and the pine forests of East Texas.  She has been published in both print and online literary journals

and anthologies such as:   One Art:  a journal of poetry, The Path of Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Your Daily Poem, Highland Park Poetry and others.