poems for mothers

A mother serves her sugar with

A bit of peppermint

To clarify the passages

That carry what she meant

When she first set to bear a soul

Quite separate from her own,

Whom she would cherish, yet must teach

To live and die alone.

*

Although a daughter, I write this as a mother.

We're both mothers now, of child-daughters:

You, a grandmother forced to be a mother,

And I, a widow, alone with my fatherless daughter.

Death has thus shaped both our lives in ways

We would not have chosen. Yet life is still the bright,

Painfully lovely thing it was always:

Our children like dancers on a dark, splendid night,

Needing our loves as I needed yours; your love

The same song as ever, a lullaby I remember

So well from my time in your arms. We move

In slow spirals towards the stars. September

Has weeks like June, yet is closer to the fall.

Love has no answers, yet its beauty answers all.