Vincent Pruis
Mother's Day
Updated: Nov 6, 2021
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.