So, my mom isn't a fan of mother's day because she says, and I agree, that mothers deserve love, respect, and special acts of kindness throughout the year. Nonetheless, I still thought it would be nice to post several old poems today that include, in some way or another, my mom. Love you Mom! Every day and always!
Glass Doors
At home the glass sliding doors
open onto our shady porch.
Wrens fly by the slender railing,
flitting between the overhanging
oaks.
My mother and I cut
snowflakes on a summer afternoon,
press them to the glass doors,
and pray that the birds remain
safe.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is one of my earliest "good" poems that I can recall. We really did this!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Layers of a Moment
The back door hangs open;
the front door clicks shut.
The mother stands past the doorway.
She thinks briefly of him, of them, of how they will be,
as she carries a bag full of lettuce,
beets,
and onions,
whose layers are breaking, beginning to slide inside,
And then of dinner and evening obligations.
The father sleeps on the couch.
His mind flutters with what never was,
is,
or will be,
The wind blows in from a nearby window,
lifting a page from the open book on his lap.
That page is always on the verge of turning.
The brother sitting on the carpet imagines an adventure,
in one hand a red truck,
in the other, a blue plane.
A story at dawn in the desert
where the dunes
are slipping away
and neither can see through the sandstorm.
It’s sad, but they must collide.
The sister in the mirror has left the faucet running.
Her washcloth is wet with dabbing her eyes.
Yesterday is tugging at her hair:
a comb caught in the knots of memory,
leaving behind
the tangled strands.
A fresh breath is slow in coming.
And no one notices the clock stuck on the wall
or hears the definite tick of the second hand.
The mother calls out to all the family.
The father awakes as his page falls back in place.
There is a crash of toys and a gasp of surprise.
The moment runs through the back door.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although this poem is in 3rd person, I based it off of my own family in many ways.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cereal Bowl
I pour many things in there,
but morning by morning,
not mixing the circles,
round like the sun on a fair day,
the rolling wheels of cars and bicycles
that rush down the highway,
with squares,
brick walls in living rooms,
windows to clouds, impending rain.
The thunder crunches when I close my mouth.
I remember those dark mornings,
when my mother smelled like oatmeal
and from my room I felt the warmth
within blankets of sleep.
The taste swirled with cinnamon
and thick cream, lining my insides
as if a shield against the day,
the sharp words I took in.
But these days, I sleep in,
alone to a noon of silence,
a puddle of time untouched by wind,
a reflection of gray years flying overhead.
I descend my valley of stairs
to the cold floor and haunted table
to slowly fill my bowl
with crushed wheat,
once baked by wrinkled hands,
now wet with white milk.
-----------------------------------------------------------
My mom all throughout the years of early morning seminary would wake up with me and make me breakfast and help me get ready. She was a wonderful light those many dark mornings.
-----------------------------------------------------------
My Mother’s Knitting
While my mother speaks, she knits with her needles
the blanket she began beside her mother, white yarn diving
beneath the pattern, then leaping at every breath.
Like water trails behind a boat, or clouds behind a speeding
jet, her nimble fingers leave traces of a design hiding
within the synaptic wrinkles of her mind. I believe her past
is a black fly wrapped in spider’s silk, full of sweet
juices she’s laid aside to feed me. Between her bed
and the couch where she curls (where I kneel, listening
to her stories) there is a loose line connecting the
moments,
as if drawing a dangled string: Ariadne’s trick to remember
the twists in the Labyrinth and the safe path back.
I’ve seen the same style line after scuttling leaves and
people,
up and down daily sidewalks, past the zigzag of grocers,
coffee-shops, and
inviting neighbors. They entrust their shadow
to the earth. They weave in the sunlight. They brush a
pathway
by their impressionist strokes. Cameras capture
this lace effect through long exposures of night’s highways:
the vehicles are vanished. Only remain the red lines of
taillights pursuing
the tug of headlights. The unseen spinning wheels churn on,
beyond the picture limits, across the roads of nations.
Cartographers could mark on maps the fibers of every trip
(the walkers, cars, sails, and airplanes) to make the world
look
like the sinew of a heart, organic, alive, and flexing
while my mother breathes. There is no way to finish
the woven blanket. She is planning to pass it on. Everything
connects, she says
through the cord of her cotton voice.
While my mother speaks, I prick my ears up to the thread
of her conversation. The strand is led through my canals,
down
to the anvil’s slate, where the hammer forges my imagination.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I love connections and making connections; somedays I feel that's my one true talent from which all my other talents spring. But I know that I wouldn't have learned so much or made so many connections without my mother. She spent time with us and talked with us, told us stories and played our games. My mother always said that it was her goal as a mother to be good friends with her children and she is definitely one of my best friends.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Music of Family
Cold. Winter. A week after my family came
together again and the day before Christmas,
I heard bells ringing at 6 am. I didn’t know
where they hung, but I imagined them:
on the corner of Maple and Church,
floating over the orange dark like dreams,
the tower beneath, unseen, robed with clouds,
there, peeling a round shivering song
where no one gathered, climbed, or pulled
ropes thick enough to drag the sun
above the blanket my mother stitched
up over the horizon, mumbling: “Go back
to bed; it’s too early to be happy.” In truth,
those were my words and my mother
shook the blanket and the darkness
off the bed like ashes from our fireplace.
Downstairs, the kitchen was full of dishes
in the jingle of breakfast; my father also
alert, sizzled something with pepper and butter;
my brother shuffled into the biggest chair
while my sisters blew their hair from side to side
like snow caught on an untraveled road.
Since when had everyone been awake
like this? Not one of us a child, anymore.
We were heralds of an ancient belief suddenly
returning: the whole morning, alive with music.
------------------------------------------------------------
This poem was recently posted, but it includes my mother. My mother has always woken up early and led several of her children to have a knack for getting up early too. Our family is important to her and to everyone in the family: my father, my sisters, my brother, and myself. I'm thankful for my mother and the way that she has helped our family to be so tight and loving. Thanks again Mom for everything you do!
