My parents used to scoff at Mother’s Day.
“A Hallmark-started holiday,” said Dad.
To Mom the date her mother died – dismay
and grief uniting always made her sad.
But I learn, from the way my kids convey
their love and gratitude. This year I had
their hugs and gifts and sweet calligraphy
on Saturday. Today is all for me.
Again I learn I’ve only to begin,
to start a train of thought, to ponder, mull,
without concern about an origin
or end, and though the engine isn’t full
at first, I feel the innards start to spin,
the pistons push, and there’s a miracle
of movement, and momentum like a gift
from musick gods, that gives my mind a lift.
Today I contemplate annuities,
to comfort and enable progeny.
I don’t intend allowance, but might seize
the means to sponsor creativity.
No micro-management or threat to freeze
would be a part of what could come to be:
support until I shuffle off this coil,
endowing loved ones for their chosen toil.
The lunch did not occur. There was no face
across a table nor a bubbling pot
of cassoulet. Opinions here do trace;
the lunch did not.
There’s license to facilitate a plot
(with hopefully no forcing, and with grace) –
a fledgling author thought it worth a shot.
So paragraphs were built upon a base
of tablecloth. Conceits were aimed and shot.
Events a little altered did take place.
The lunch did not.
The pole is bolted onto fresh concrete,
its height about four feet, its color black.
A year of paving work upon the street
has left us with this column in our track.
Will it remain when all the work’s complete?
It’s shaped like a pedestrian attack,
a stanchion to restrict, divide, retard.
Imagining utility is hard.
Though years advance more quickly now,
and change is rare to find,
I comprehend in manners how
to exercise my mind.
A lot of it’s vicarious
and much is self-assigned
(there’s nothing that’s nefarious;
I’m neither deaf nor blind).
I practice language in my tongue,
with Spanish intertwined;
I exercise and dwell among
the sweets of humankind.
I’ve known some individuals quite nice,
but silently pathetic and reserved,
as if their parentage did not entice
initiative, as if they were unnerved
by wounded mothers, loving at a price,
or weakened dads from stalwart humor swerved.
It may be such producing sad result –
a passive undeclarative adult.
Nobody knows how long the fates have spun
the thread. Perhaps such ignorance is best.
Imagine certainty about the run –
then hubris blooms and twists. I never guessed
I’d be here now – foreknowledge would have done
me wrong. For sure I tread no mythic quest,
and all too frequently fatigue appears,
but I anticipate fifteen more years.
I find it difficult to notice sights,
although I’m not as senseless as the folk
I walk among. Perhaps it’s youth’s delights
distracting, but I often yearn to poke
a back or interrupt a gaze at phone
with “Pay attention,” not barked stridently
but low, suggesting in a placid tone
a dozen miracles to hear and see.
A padlock turns its back and grabs my eye.
A light inside I didn’t mark before
(I think) commands my consciousness to try
to collate ambience and gather more.
But even so, on streets I often tread,
I fail to note black wires overhead.
Employing several others as I plied
my accidental trade, I only sought
integrity and honest effort tried
with their momentum, for I never thought
I’d find a twin. I paid a wage and taught
a bit, but each selected their own how.
Reviewing, I approve of what was wrought,
and may engage another to endow.
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