Mother Morning, July o1, 2013

Monday,

   July! A new month and hopefully some new poetry. I worked on this a few days and it seems to be ready. I don't really know what causes these poems to come out... I think that's part of the fun. Let the idea come out on its own then work on it until it makes some kind of sense.

Mother Morning

 

And when I woke, there was morning

slumped in an armchair tapping its foot
impatiently, the way mamma used to do,
pearly arms crossed, eyes sternly narrow,
"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
My routine answer, a wide mouth yawn.

 

At sixty-five I can’t help but feel the old guilt,

sleeping in till noon instead of up and running  
long before the clock’s alarm. Today smacked
me in the face with a trillion megaton bomb
of sunlight; my eyes popped open by the blast,
my hands shot up protectively— Too late.
Wide awake. Irreparable damage done.
The morning’s won like mamma always did.

 

She never spoke to me as if I were a person,

a living, breathing  thing. She sounded like
rain beating steadily against the center
of an empty pie tin— Not the flat thud
of raindrops on sidewalk, that was Pops.
Her voice… a breeze, that gentle racket
wind made when rummaging through
 the spring elms’  thick, green locks,
or as it danced haphazardly across
the leaky rooftops of identical track homes.

 

“I love you best,” Mom always said,

her echo doesn’t quite ring  true to me.
I never found her to be extremely caring
or forgiving. She asked me once to rub
her shoulders— Hair spray and roses,
I remember. A funny smell, I thought.
Not appropriate for mothers.
—rrw o7-o1-13