Mother's Day

A few months ago, my poem "Mother's Day" appeared in Glass Mountain. In July I wrote a nifty little post about its dedication & my appreciation for the friend to whom it's dedicated, &, now that some time has passed, I can share the poem itself with you here:

Mother's Day

for Vera

Windows whistling,

we lurch along a backwoods

road, its shoulder grown over

in blackberry brambles.

Along telephone wires,

brass-breasted robins

are strung, and laundry

flops in the backseat.

We friends enter Spring

and Lynden simultaneously.

—There,

the two drooling cats

witness from a gray porch

as we climb moss-limbed

cherry trees and geese

patrol fallow fields.

Your mom’s lilacs lean heavy

against the hayloft ladder.

You twirl me on

the barn swing, woven

by your great uncles—

strands, 70 years old, gleam

like buttercups in a mote-

spiraled shaft of evening light.

Snap.

Coffee percolates

on iron stovetop, and I

watch on as you tell father, tell sister,

what happened to the rope.

This bloom, there is no one else

to receive apology.