Dear Mother, the rain is soft this dark morning.
Our little dog breathes roughly on the couch.
This house, in stairsteps is a dream I’ve had
of climbing to nowhere, afraid of nothing, everything
broken glass between us, elaborate
gates to the halls of wisdom somewhere in the
vanishing -line view up the way.
Our American Midwest legacy of
letters, corn pudding, pretty citified
trinkets to talk about with company,
picnics under the oaks, redbuds
springing to life. These are blankets laid out
on the grass, a sturdy woven basket
with a hinged lid. We eat Ham salad sandwiches
but know the “ham” is just ground-up bologna
& pickles.
That salad was no hoax, the day’s news
no joke either, but all these work-arounds
in hard times, raise questions of trust
as half-men-half beasts stomp the
ground, run helter-skelter with
nonsense, petulance and make-believe.
They run away with the flag in a game
that is no picnic game. Was it you
or Dad who told me once that the chicken broth
in the soup should not pose a problem
to my vegetarian body-self?
It wasn’t poison, but you would easily
have snuck that by if I hadn’t asked.
Mother, I’ll Love You Forever, and
I walk to the borders of each day
Howling for days we talked long
of books, gardens, the great ladies
of the world, our daily news briefings,
Mostly nothing – everything, this too,
shrinks to a vanishing point.
Will I be homeless without you?
Will I be free? Either way, I’ll be
Sad, grateful for the sturdy house you built
inside of me, all the breakage and repair,
our hinges that hold things together,
let the doors swing wide.
Early Morning Poems 