Two Years and Two Months

Two Years and Two Months is a contemplation of the complex and many-stranded love the author shares with her mother. The poems celebrate their living together in the last two years and two months of her mother's life, as she turns 100, and as they are sabotaged by a world pandemic, to then find themselves redeemed by a sharing of memories, a love for the natural world and literature. As they deal with the nightly news of a strange new world, and the daily chores of kitchen and laundry, they spend their afternoons reading aloud new or favorite books from Swann's Way to Jane Eyre, from Robinson Crusoe to Circe. The poems soon deal with the losses and confusion that come with the mother's stroke in the final months, as mother and daughter eke out unexpected pathways of love and meaning through the words of Milton, Lucille Clifton, Kay Ryan and others. As her mother's life is ending, Reed's life as a poet begins.