Posted tagged ‘mother-daughter poem’

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Frustrated (Filial)

December 19, 2012

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Frustrated (Filial)

I have my mother here.
I get furious at her, perhaps unfairly, because
she does not always understand people
who are different from her.

Often she is open, sympathetic
to all beings of the
world, other times
less so.

And just as she does not mean
to be intolerant, I do not mean
to be angry.  But old habits-what it meant/means
to be misunderstood–what it means/meant
to fail at being
nice–
die hard.  Anger certainly
won’t cover
lost ground; and yet we trot it out, an
old plough horse that knows well
its way home.

*************************

Ha!  Here’s a draft poem.  No resemblance to any person living or dead is intended.

My mother is, in fact, a very tolerant person.  She likes to get involved in political arguments that I personally find almost intolerable.   I just don’t like politics very much. 

Also, as in the case of many people’s mothers probably, she has a hard time understanding the demands of a second career as, for example,  a blogger! (Agh.) 

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Oddly Enough Why My Mom Is a Lifelong Democrat (Hay Knife, Fear Itself)

October 23, 2012

Oddly Enough Why My Mom Is a Lifelong Democrat (Hay Knife, Fear Itself)

When my mom was young, she fell,
wearing bunged-up shoes,
upon a hay-knife.

A hay knife
is what it sounds like–triangulated
blade in the bales, blood
gobbed, swept them shocked
to doctor’s, neighbor’s car so fast

she did not see until at last
among the wired instruments
that her own mother, in panting flash,
had pulled a dress inside-
out
over her work clothes, the seams
dissected veins, the backward buttons clotted
knots in flapped
gaps–she

was horrified.

For she knew that town
was down
on the poor, those (like them)
who lived
in rattled houses with
chapped
barns.

And what
would the doctor
think, and how–
burning in the full turn of
embarrassment–would her parents even
pay? all cheeks reddened
in the muttering scritch stitch–but prised
from her furied mind an image
of FDR, patrician whose voice made bearable
the endless jags
of static and threat, whose overseeing eye–
bright to her as some great bird’s–would not,
she was somehow certain,
look down heedlessly
on a poor girl
with bleeding
bottom.

It was not
until the doctor spoke of luck
and the just-missing
of major organs that she noticed, above
the reversed collar twisted
like found
tourniquet, her mother’s
pallor, the seamed
hands running
up and down her layered arms
like creatures newly conscious of
a cage; not till then that she began to realize
how deep
the wound was.

************************************

So sorry the above is so long, but hopefully reads fast.  I am posting for MagPie Tales (in response to the picture above from the U.S. dollar posted by Tess Kincaid) and dVerse Poets Open LInk Night.  It is a true story – my mother survived the cut! (On her you know what!)  The Great Depression a terrible time for those like her family whose savings were lost in a foreclosed bank, that somehow still kept all its mortgages operational.   A nod here to Joy Anne Jones, Hedgewitch, who brought up FDR democrats the other day and got my mind running on this piece.  And of course a nod to my amazing mom who, at nearly 90, reads the New York Times every single day.

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“Dead Zone”

April 26, 2012

NYC (But not actually Park Avenue but Empire State Building seen from Hudson)

Dead Zone

His name still on my cellphone, cool air
on flexed wrist, Park Avenue bordering
on indigo eventide; press
key that rings up just
my mom now.

Helmsley Palace (ahead) wears
lit stories like a
tiara.  Hi sweetie,
she says as brightly, then launches (after and how
are you) into the letter she got today from
guess who.

Happiness pairs with despair as I wonder who actually
got down to write her as I had meant to, who else would know
his birthday (the first he’s ever missed). An irritatingly-
organized cousin comes
to mind.

The President, she gloats (so, not cousin)–siren
morphs to moan a few blocks distant–you know I’ve
never gotten a letter from a president before, not
in my whole life. 

Curb shapes huge cobbles–my father
in two wars–picture
a foamed stein with
floating sun–dawn hike in Czechlosovakia,
issued for breakfast, later, beer, each
with raw egg–

Deep step onto tar, and
even as I know, this being NYC, that all the shadows
wearing black are not
in mourning: he wants
you to send him some money, I tell
her.

Yes, she laughs, it said
‘do not bend,’ right on the envelope.

I know she hasn’t forgotten this date, just today’s–
so many red finned limos, trucks, I have to cross
in angles.

I want to whisper, Mom, you know it’s April 25th, then
imagine her voice scraping the top of something
or bottom, once she remembers, and how, after
she has descended into sadness, I
would comfort her; how, after making her
feel bad, I’d make her
feel better—the Metlife passage huge with
sheen and shine, blocks of transluscent
air/glass/linoleum–

Deep into that gloss, a warble
of politics and donations,
I’ll probably lose you soon, I say,  
just as I always do when I get to about that spot–

**************************************************

Twenty-fith draft poem of sorts for National Poetry Month.  Agh. My initial posting of it a bit confusing, but I’ve edited it now.  (So I hope it reads better.)

I am linking this one to Real Toads, which had an “Ella’s Edge” prompt about writing an “Inside Outside Poem” one that moves in concentric circles.   I’m not sure that I quite understood the prompt – but there you have it.  This poem was also inspired by the very different and much more uplifting poem of Lady Nyo’s about the anniversary of the birth of her father’s birthday.

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Same Strokes, Slightly Different Folks. (“Buddha Hands”)

November 22, 2011

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Last week, as part of the dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt, I posted a poem on the theme of “change,” which spoke of mothers stroking heads.  I was struck by how many commenters mentioned their memories of this experience.   This brought me to re-write an earlier poem (posted as a draft some time ago) about the same subject,  but with a slightly different take.

Buddha Hands

My mother was a demanding child,
“right now,” her favorite phrase, though
her father egged her on, she says, liking
to see her get a rise
out of her own mother, a tease.

“Terrible,” she says, and I picture
her father, whom I don’t truly remember,
as a man with bits and pieces
of her same face–
determined nose, staunch forehead,
bead eyes.

Yet, when she was tired, my mother goes on,
her mother (to whom she could be so ornery) would let her
put her head upon her lap, and, without mention of
the day’s spat, gently
wipe back her hair.

It felt so good,
my mother sighs, that now, nearly 90,
she sometimes wipes her own hair
back in just that way,
and, as she stands
before me, she palms
the grey strands from the still dark
widow’s peak, again
and again.

And I think, watching the path
of her palm,
how she used to do exactly
the same to me: how, in the back seat of a long drive,
where no tasks could be tended, my pointed
busy mother stroked my head.

I suddenly think  too
of Buddha hands,
a temple market in Mandalay,
where they were lined up–spare parts–
the loose stares of single eyes on the
shelf above–
tapered wooden fingers
flaked with gilt–

And I know, standing before that far counter,
and lying in the seat of that ghost car, that if ever
there were such a thing on this
Earth as freedom from suffering, freedom
from desire,
it could be found (for me at least), in that space
upon my forehead where my mother, her mother too,
ran their hands–
without grasping,
without clinging, without even
holding on.

(P.S.  I’ve edited this poem some since first posting–really just the beginning.)

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Change Poem – Mother/Daughter/Sister/Hands (“Making It Better”)

November 19, 2011

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DVerse Poets Pub has a “Poetics” challenge to write about change today which set me to thinking of both the new and old.  Here’s the resulting poem:

Making it Better

I think today, the anniversary of my daughter’s birth,
of my mother’s grace–
how she came to my hospital bed at 8 a.m.,
two hours after leaving her sister’s,
her favorite red blouse catching
the robin’s egg fluorescents, the curled tips
of her brown hair carefully
slipped back as she
bent over over the bassinet,
exuding unshadowed wonder.

My mother, who never made any
decision without vocal re-thinks,
not asking me
at that time
how she should dress
her sister–whether the funeral home’s gown
would not be too frilly–she worked after all,
had a career—
carrying only in the back of her dark eyes
the echos of that laboring pant
that strains so to keep on–

My mother, cupping
my daughter’s still-damp head,
in the same cool hands that had
stroked my forehead as a child, as her mother
had stroked hers, and that now,
when she’s been sisterless
and motherless for many years,
stroke her own forehead, wiping
the thinned hair back.

Like this, like this, she shows me,
running her palms over the
join of face and crown–
her particular self and her
universal self–I just find
that it makes me feel better.

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National Poetry Month – Day 15 – “Buddha Hands”

April 15, 2011

Draft poem for today.  It has nothing to do with taxes!

Buddha Hands

My mother says she was a sassy child.
Her father egged her on, she thinks now, liking
to see whether she could get a rise
out of her own mother, a kind of a tease.
“Terrible,’ she says, and I see
her father, whom I don’t truly remember, as
a sharp-nosed, sharp-tongued man, who nonetheless
had a wink about him, his reddish face rough from the cold of 
Minnesota when he ducked into the kitchen to warm up
with coffee and a bottle of brandy stashed
in a cracker tin.  He, she tried to please, but her mom, she says,
she could be ornery to.

Yet, when she was tired, my mother says,
her mother, to whom she could be so ornery, would let her
put her head on her lap, and would wipe her hair
back from her face, smoothing her forehead.
It felt so good, she sighs, that now, nearly 88,
she sometimes wipes her own hair back in just that way.
As she speaks, as she stands before me, she palms
the grey strands from the still dark
widow’s peak; she soothes the reddish brow
again and again, passing her hand over and up
her forehead.

I think of how she used to do exactly
the same to me: in the back seat of a car, on a long drive,
where no tasks could tended, and my pointed, busy, mother, stroked
my head.  I think too of Buddha hands,
a temple market in Asia, where they were lined up
inside a counter, the tapered fingers
flaked with gilt, and how if there were ever such a thing on this
Earth as freedom from desire, freedom from suffering,
it could be found (for me at least) in that one
smooth space on my forehead where my mother, her mother too,
ran their hands,
without grasping, without clinging, without even
holding on.

All rights reserved.  Suggestions welcomed.

PS Sorry to those of you who follow this blog regularly that I sometimes recycle old drawings.  This arises from lack of time (and illustrational capacity!)

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Sunday Poem (Mother, Daughter, in Father-Son Realm)

February 21, 2010

Script (Poem for Sundays)

A poem for Sundays–perhaps more of a story than poem.  Thanks as always for reading.

Script

Pictures hung in the Sunday School downstairs:
men mostly, whose long-haired, but not hippified, heads
were highlit with gold, clouds, doves,
and, hovering above, goatee-shaped
wisps of flame.

In the actual nave hung
only a spare metal cross,
lit by shafts of dust-mote-
dropping day.

Whenever the minister made an important point, he cupped
his hands together,
the fingers separate but clenched, the pinkies nearly throbbing
with tautness.  He used the gesture
to symbolize a knot.  But also growth.
Tense knotty growth.  How hard
it all was, how simple.

I watched the terse bend of knuckle closely, the extended
half-wound fists.  But, as the sermon droned, I turned to
other hands:  my own inside short white gloves, the worn seam
tracing their perimeter,
like a railroad track en route to itself;
my mother’s, bare, cool, soft.
I picked up her fingers,
one by one, as if to find beneath them,
a way of passing time.

Then, just as my father’s shaved crust of chin
nodded over the crisp edge of Sunday shirt collar,
she quietly rotated
the bulletin on top of a hymnal and
modeled my name in script.
She used one of the short pencils stored in the pews
for new parishioners.  I, taking off one glove
to firmly grip the wood,
copied her letters slowly,
feeling each curve
as a blessing, a secret blessing,
for we were interlopers in that
realm of fathers/sons/ghosts,
the ones who snuck beneath the shafts of light,
then basked in them,
we women.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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