Motherless
We get what we get
Welcome, and a warm first hello to the newcomers!
I’m so happy you’re here.
This week’s Sunday poems are a reflection on Mother’s Day. Anyone who reads my work knows I have complex feelings about my own mother.
Contents:
Mother
Wine Grapes
MOTHER 1990: I got underfoot in the kitchen as she baked cookies, My soft apple-juice fingers reaching high overhead to measure the flour, Packing the brown sugar into the cup with a satisfying squish. Gritty-soft grains, sweet under corn-kernel nails. An elephant reaches her trunk to a calf who is not hers, Yet is hers by the rules of the world. 1992: I curled my small body behind her knees on the sagging couch And traced the nubby plaid fabric as the TV droned, News anchors explaining things I could not hope to understand. I was little enough to fit in back then. My bones had not yet hardened. A hummingbird builds her nest alone, Thinks back to the lessons her own mother taught her about craftsmanship. 1994: I clawed for attention, And she told me to show patience until the end of the row, So I learned to knit, too, Because it held the power to steal her eyes from me, And I would have done anything for a gaze that came without pleading. A woman winks at her reflection as she braids her own hair. Some animals give birth to themselves.
WINE GRAPES If you want to raise your young grapes for wine, Give them just enough water, not too much. They’ll grow up to hate you. Don’t be surprised. Happiness is for grapes more water-plumped. Your wine grapes will taste quite incredible. They’ll bring you praise, bring honor to your name, But those grapes will think you are the devil. Their side of the story will bring you shame. If you tell wine grapes that healthy bodies Are for those lesser souls with weaker will, They’ll believe you, because in you they see A role model, parental needs fulfilled. How you treat your wine grapes is up to you, Just know that someday they will tell the truth.
Did you know I self-published a poetry collection?
Give It A Home is a memoir made up of 100 sonnets written over the course of a year in the life of a 30-something woman struggling to cope with change, loss, and aging.
Click below to get your deluxe copy, hand-packed and signed by the author, shipped for free, and bundled with a cute sticker, all for just $16.99:
I love these lines:
"A woman winks at her reflection as she braids her own hair.
Some animals give birth to themselves."