Going to the Polls with Mother

Here’s a poem I rewrote into a haibun for my “Summer Days at the Five and Dime” collection. Do the haiku work? I’d like to submit this to Silver Birch Press (deadline 4/15) “all about mothers” theme.

Going to the Polls with Mother

The gray-tiled floor smells of sweeping compound. There is a wooden stage to the left, basketball hoops on either end of the room. Mother is handed a paper ballot after giving her name and address to the poll worker. We walk across the gym to a wood-framed booth with a navy-blue curtain. She pulls the drape aside, stands at the shelf, picks up the yellow pencil tied to a long string; closes the curtain behind her. Voting is by secret ballot, she says. I am not allowed to look (even though I’m too young to read).

ducklings
follow the mallard
nibble at the riverbank

When absentee ballots are brought to the dining room at Woodside Manor, Mother, age ninety-one, is the first one in line. Her table mates grumble, We’re too old. We don’t care anymore. Mother bristles, explains why they need to know their candidates and vote. She marks her ballot, then returns to her room.

lion paces
back and forth
along the iron fence